{Stupidity and Hatred [continued]}[9th April 1991]

[Redbook9:49][19910409:0923b]{Stupidity and Hatred [continued]}[9th April 1991]

19910409.0923

[continued]

The appalling thing – which I should be delighted to be shown is incorrect – is that I see in the […] bishop *[...]’s face and voice, as in so many of the evangelical clergy, the same narrow stupidity, and even traces of a readiness, in a sanitised, self-deluding clerical kind of way, to hate.

*{I feel more sympathetic to [him] after watching the [...] [TV] interview [...]; but I still don’t altogether trust that Evangelical mind.}

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{Stupidity and Hatred}[9th April 1991]

[Redbook9:49][19910409:0923]{Stupidity and Hatred}[9th April 1991]

19910409.0923

What comes through from the spokesmen – official and unofficial – of the British National Party, or whatever the current fascists are called, is chiefly in their faces, and their voices: stupidity projecting hatred.

[See last ts journal entry but one, [Redbook9:48][19910408:2347]{The Rise of Racism}[8th April 1991]; the BNP created Combat 18 (referred to in a footnote to that entry), whose name is apparently a coded reference to Adolf Hitler (presumably based on the numerical placing of the initials AH in the alphabet)]

[continued]

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{Happy-clappy}[8th April 1991]

[Redbook9:48-49][19910408:2347b]{Happy-clappy}[8th April 1991]

.1147*

[continued]

One of the problems with characterising Evangelism as of the **[R]ight semi-circle is its emphasis on singing and dancing.

One answer to this *** is its own O[uter] C[ircle] rotation, presumably since its birth as Calvinism and similar movements around 500 years ago;**** but it is also worth pointing out that when Evangelicals sing and dance they do so, on the whole, very clumsily, with none of the dedication of the Artist – their dedication being in no sense to Art, but to their faith – with all the outward grace, in fact, of carousers at a rugby club dinner.#

It may seem churlish not to allow them the dedication to God, in their dancing and singing, which they profess, but that begs the question which can never be answered: what exactly is the quality of any other person’s relationship with God, acknowledged or not?

*[See last previous ts entry, fn=*]

**[Initial capitalisation inserted in ts for clarity, replacing ms lower case]

***(See earlier Vol[ume]s [])

****roughly!

#(often surprisingly musical, for rugby players)

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{The Rise of Racism}[8th April 1991]

[Redbook9:48][19910408:2347]{The Rise of Racism}[8th April 1991]

.1147*

The rise of racism,** at least as compared with the late 1960’s and 1970’s – or perhaps one should isolate the new self-confidence of racism – is very much on course for the C-S~-M~ sector of the Outer Circle.***

*[sic – cf last previous journal entry, dated 19910408.1543; the programme time (below, fn=**) indicates that this is 1147pm]

**(ref BBC1TV ‘Panorama’ 2130 tonight)

***64C1984|S~1992

[“Combat 18” was founded in 1992]

[See next ts journal entry but one, [Redbook9:49][19910409:0923]{Stupidity and Hatred}[9th April 1991]]

[Interesting to contrast with this the current tendency towards left-wing ‘cancellation’ or censorship of public opinions perceived to be right-wing, & the right-wing reaction against that tendency (especially in the United States of America) and against liberal immigration/asylum rules (in the USA & Europe) <20240203>(64J~)]

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{Blue Sergei}*[8th April 1991]

[Redbook9:48][19910408:1543]{Blue Sergei}*[8th April 1991]

19910408.1543

It seems that the Russian slang for homosexual is “blue”.** With us, of course, the word implies, for example, pornographic, as in “blue film”, without so far as I know any preference between hetero- and homosexuality.

*{(?)}

[Gottit]

**(per T[imes] L[iterary] S[upplement] 4591, 19910329:22)

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{Russian Art at the Turn of the Century}[8th April 1991]

[Redbook9:47][19910408:0045]{Russian Art at the Turn of the Century}[8th April 1991]

.0045

‘Perhaps the most decisive break [by Russian artists at the turn of the century]* with the nineteenth-century Realist tradition lay in **|the rejection of the explicit in favour of the allusive, the flight from concrete reality into imagination and fantasy, dreams and even nightmares. The artists celebrated artifice and illusion, epitomised in works for and about the theatre. They loved masks and disguise, and they wallowed in the bygone.|**’

**

*[Square brackets per ms indicating insertion in ms]

**

/	J~	1896	\
64|	G~	1904	|	**||**
\	R~	1912	/

I might have expected this at R~ rather than J~-G~. Perhaps the late stage of the 2048[-year] cycle (2048R~C1920) advances the onset of R~C symptoms.

***T[imes] L[iterary] S[upplement] 4590, 19910322:16, ‘Wallowing in the bygone: Treasures from Russia’s Silver Age’, L. Hughes (reviewing ‘The Twilight of the Tsars: Russian art at the turn of the century’, Exhibition at Hayward Gallery [London].

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{Interruptions}[7th April 1991]

[Redbook9:47][19910407:2340]{Interruptions}[7th April 1991]

.2340

‘Since I began this note I have been called off at least a dozen times: once for the fishman, to buy codfish; once to see a man who had brought me some barrels of apples; once to see a book-man; then to Mrs. Upham, to see about a drawing I had promised to make for her; then to nurse the baby; then into the kitchen to make chowder for dinner; and now I am at it again.’

*

So glad to see it happening to someone else; although in my case the interruptions are almost entirely repeated variations on the last two.** Mind you, I only counted six, or possibly seven, interruptions in Ms. Stowe’s account. You think you’ve got problems, lady? – just wait till the baby grows up to be two mobile, talkative, intelligent, curious and competitive child-persons.

*Harriet Beecher Stowe, writing in 1850, quoted in T[imes] L[iterary] S[upplement] 4590:19910322:21

**[“nurse” in a general, modern sense!]

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{Soviet Foreign Policy [continued]}[7th April 1991]

[Redbook9:46][19910407:1231i]{Soviet Foreign Policy [continued]}[7th April 1991]

19910407.1231 (Sun[day])

[continued]

‘The fact is* that by 1986, Soviet efforts to regain the initiative in Third World conflicts were failing, most conspicuously in Afghanistan, where U.S.-supplied Stingers were turning the tide of the battle. Work on [the] S[trategic] D[efense] I[initiative], meanwhile, was progressing steadily. At the Reykjavik summit in October 1986, Gorbachev made an unsuccessful last-ditch attempt to use arms control pressure to force Reagan to abandon it.

‘Under the circumstances, something clearly had to be done to slow the relentless shift of the “correlation of forces” in the West’s favour. Gorbachev’s answer to this, as well as to the problem of domestic stagnation, was, in part, not very different from Lenin’s in an earlier era: a policy of “peredyshka”** or strategic retreat. However, for a variety of reasons, including hidden disarray and self-doubt within the Communist movement itself, the retreat went much further than Gorbachev, or certainly his early supporters in the military, had originally planned.’

***

*[See last previous ts entry]

**[1921]

***[ibid] T[imes] L[iterary] S[upplement] 4589, 19910315:6, ‘Soviet Military Paradoxes: Has the Kremlin really become more defensive-minded?’ P. Glynn, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, & author of ‘Closing Pandora’s Box: A History of Arms Control.’

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{Soviet Foreign Policy}[7th April 1991]

[Redbook9:45-46][19910407:1231h]{Soviet Foreign Policy}[7th April 1991]

19910407.1231 (Sun[day])

[continued]

‘MacGuire* concedes that [President] Reagan’s confrontational stance spurred the Soviets towards a sweeping reassessment of their foreign policy in 1983 and 1984.** However, he contends that the initial impact was to make them genuinely fear a real war and to become more aggressive, especially in the Third World.

‘One is inclined to accept much of MacGuire’s account of the 1983-84** period. Indeed, it is worth remembering that as late as 1985 Gorbachev increased military aid to Third World clients and escalated the war in Afghanistan in an effort to win it. It is difficult, though, to explain his later change of policy. Why did he move from a policy of intensified foreign interventionism to one of unprecedented “glasnost” and major foreign policy concessions, even in regional disputes? MacGuire attributes the change to an “act of faith”*** on the part of Gorbachev. A simpler and more plausible explanation might lie with the Stinger**** missiles and the Strategic Defense Initiative.#

#*

*[Spelling unclear in ms, throughout – looks like MccGuire, could be MaGuire or MacGuire]

**64C1984

***

			1984
			C
		/↑/	/↓/	\↓\
	/↑/	/↓/			\↓\
1976	R~	r~	[1992]			S~	1992

****supplied by the U[nited] S[tates] to anti-Soviet forces in Afghanistan.

#[‘Star Wars’]

#*[(Times Literary Supplement 4589, 19910315:6, ‘Soviet Military Paradoxes: Has the Kremlin really become more defensive-minded?’ P. Glynn, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, Washington, & author of ‘Closing Pandora’s Box: A History of Arms Control.’ ]

[continued]

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{Dissidents [continued (5)]}[7th April 1991]

[Redbook9:45][19910407:1231g]{Dissidents [continued (5)]}[7th April 1991]

19910407.1231 (Sun[day])

[continued]

Note that the Soviet Union, in whose history the O[uter] C[ircle] pattern seems particularly clear (at least as extracted above),* was – like Europe at least over the last few centuries, like Britain in the Middle Ages, and like ancient Egypt, relatively immune from outside interference.

*[See last seven ts entries, [Redbook9:41][19910407:1231b]{Russians await the Apocalypse}[7th April 1991]ff]

**[So, what about 1987ff? Although there is a distinct risk here of tailoring, it is worth pointing out that Glasnost, Perestroika and Demokratizatsiya were specific choices by the Soviet Union to give away power, and ultimately, in late 1991 (after the date of this journal entry) (cf 64~r~|S~1992), albeit not altogether intentionally, to sacrifice itself: starting at almost exactly that point at the end the 64-year cycle (at the start of which – 1922 – cf64G~1920 – it was founded), the 64C1984 Crisis point, where such choices in Circles Analysis & Synthesis theory become most necessary and potentially most effective in reversing the cycle from Outer to Inner Circle. Interesting also that Putin’s attempt to undo this choice and its consequences took material form internationally with the Russian invasion and annexation of Ukrainian Crimea in 2014, half way through the current 64-year cycle (64A~2016).]

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{Dissidents [continued (4)]}[7th April 1991]

[Redbook9:44-45][19910407:1231f]{Dissidents [continued (4)]}[7th April 1991]

19910407.1231 (Sun[day])

[continued]

‘Dissidence as a public phenomenon crystallised around the trial in 1966 of Sinyarsky* and his friend Yuli Daniel for “slandering the Soviet State” in fictions smuggled abroad and published there.... With the invasion of Czechoslovakia,**, dissidence turned to civil disobedience, and at the same time to sending signed letters of protest to the authorities – invitations to a dialogue that were met with swift repression.... By 1983,*** imprisonment and forced emigration had destroyed the movement; three years after that,**** “glasnost” had become government policy.

#

*[See [Redbook9:42][19910407:1231c]{Stalin and the Mystery of Power}[7th April 1991], above]

**64G~1968

***64C1984

****1987

# – ibid [(T[imes] L[iterary] S[upplement] 4589, 19910315:5, ‘Homo Sovieticus: Utopia & reality in Russian experience’, D. Fanger, Professor of Slavic and Comparative History at Harvard University)]: 5-6

[continued]

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{Dissidents [continued (3)]}[7th April 1991]

[Redbook9:44][19910407:1231f]{Dissidents [continued (3)]}[7th April 1991]

19910407.1231 (Sun[day])

[continued]

‘That movement,* helped along by the return from the camps of some 10,000 political prisoners between 1953 and 1956,** began to take form through the spontaneous appearance of “kompanii”, groups of friends who would meet regularly *** to eat, drink and exchange views, information and reading matter. From this came “samizdat”: “If you liked a manuscript, you borrowed it overnight and copied it on your typewriter” in blurred carbon copies. (Alexeyeva usually made five – three for friends, one for the lender, and one for herself). First it was poetry, then the memoirs of returned prisoners, then translations of “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, “Nineteen Eighty-Four”, “Darkness at Noon”, then “Doctor Zhivago” and the unpublished Solzhenitsyn.

****

*[Dissidence in the Soviet Union – see last previous ts entry]

**64A~1952

[64]J~1960

***Presumably how the late-19th century revolutionary movements had begun....

****[– ibid (T[imes] L[iterary] S[upplement] 4589, 19910315:5, ‘Homo Sovieticus: Utopia & reality in Russian experience’, D. Fanger, Professor of Slavic and Comparative History at Harvard University): 5-6]

[continued]

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{Dissidents [continued]}[7th April 1991]

[Redbook9:43-44][19910407:1231e]{Dissidents [continued]}[7th April 1991]

19910407.1231 (Sun[day])

[continued]

‘Ludmilla Alexe[ye]va, a leading member of the Soviet civil rights movement which flourished for a decade beginning in the late 1960s,* was, like Sinyarsky, forced into emigration.... A student of history at Moscow University just after the war,** she describes recently demobilised “frontoviki” who came to dominate the university, peasant boys who had held Party posts in the army and now, with a taste of power under their belts, came to the city to stay. Without intellectual interests,*** incapable of critical thinking, they were training to become bosses, and accusing fellow-students of lapses in vigilance or loyalty was one way to success. These were the “new Soviet men” of her generation. But the system that produced them produced an alternative, too: while mothers were out serving the cause, **** “a legion of grandmothers” were bringing up their children, instilling traditional values which would surface in response to Kruschev’s thaw and fuel what came to be called dissidence.

#

*64G~1968

64R~1976

(64C1984)

**64U~1944

(64A~1952)

***U~-A~

****G~-side

#[– ibid (T[imes] L[iterary] S[upplement] 4589, 19910315:5, ‘Homo Sovieticus: Utopia & reality in Russian experience’, D. Fanger, Professor of Slavic and Comparative History at Harvard University): 5-6]

[continued]

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{Dissidents}[7th April 1991]

[Redbook9:43-45][19910407:1231d]{Dissidents}[7th April 1991]

19910407.1231 (Sun[day])

[continued]

*

’A final chapter, called “Hopes and Alternatives”, credits the dissidents – that small and fundamentally apolitical movement of the 1960s and 70s** – with reintroducing into Soviet civilisation the notion of the individual; discusses some of the central and contradictory traits of the Russian national character, mercurial and*** prone to look for scapegoats; and concludes with a grim outline of three varieties of Russian fascism **** which might replace the old Soviet empire.’

#

*(p42)[– Last previous ts entry]

↓

**64J~1960

64G~1968

64R~1976

↓

***(G~-)M~??

↓

****

64C1984

/↓\

64S~1992

# – ibid [T[imes] L[iterary] S[upplement] 4589, 19910315:5, ‘Homo Sovieticus: Utopia & reality in Russian experience’, D. Fanger, Professor of Slavic and Comparative History at Harvard University]

[continued]

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{Stalin and the Mystery of Power}[7th April 1991]

[Redbook9:42][19910407:1231c]{Stalin and the Mystery of Power}[7th April 1991]

19910407.1231 (Sun[day])

[continued]

‘In the account of [Lenin’s]* successor,** the “magical Stalinist night” invoked repeatedly in Sinyarsky/Tertz’s*** earlier writing is once again dominant. A faithful Leninist, Stalin**** could not help stamping the idea of absolute dictatorship with his own antithetical personality. This amounted to anointing himself a god, # clothing his power with mystery, and making of the State a quasi-religious thing. He was a “born artist” and master hypnotist (the illustrative literary text in this instance is Bulgakov’s “Master and Margarita”). Did he believe the propaganda about his own exceptional gifts, or the justifications offered publicly for the waves of arrests and executions he oversaw? Sinyarsly suggests that “like any true artist, Stalin both believed and didn’t believe his imagination”.#* Nostalgia for his era is a nostalgia for order#** and the compulsory certitudes that sustained it – and even more Sinyarsky suggests, for a time when power was not merely a mechanism but a mystery.”#***

#****

*[Square brackets per ms]

**(Lenin died 1924)

***(the author’s alter ego)

****(Stalin General Secretary [of the Communist Party] from 1922)

#

				1920
				C
			(/↓/)	|	\ ↓\
		r~		|		S~	1928
				|			\↓\
	g~			|			M~	1936
				|			(/)
				|		U~

#*{Hmm....}

[True of some creative people at least]

#**1922ff – 1953

64C1920

64M~1936

64A~1952

↓

(p43)

[Next ts entry]

#***ie religion as hierarchy

– M~

#**** – ibid [T[imes] L[iterary] S[upplement] 4589, 19910315:5, ‘Homo Sovieticus: Utopia & reality in Russian experience’, D. Fanger, Professor of Slavic and Comparative History at Harvard University]

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