Adriano,
This is probably one of the references you are referring to:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v39/n15/sheila-fitzpatrick/good-communist-homes ;
It has your reference to Lenin’s wife not being a millennialist.
I also noticed a review by Sheila Fitzpatrick of another Slezkine book:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v27/n06/sheila-fitzpatrick/i-sailed-away-with-a-mighty-push-never-to-return
Interestingly, this morning I received the following essay from the Jewish
publication Mosaic along with an invitation to subscribe to the publication:
https://mosaicmagazine.com/essay/history-ideas/2020/01/the-message-from-jerusalem/
I suspect this was a result of ordering Slezkine’s book. I can’t think what
else it could be.
This reminded me that years ago there was some on-going issue that caused me to
suspect that I wasn’t getting correct information here in the U.S. and so I
subscribed to The Jerusalem Post. [Back in the day when you could only get it
hard-copy] For several years thereafter I received a variety of requests to
support various Jewish causes. J
Lawrence
From: lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:lit-ideas-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On ;
Behalf Of adriano paolo shaul gershom palma
Sent: Saturday, January 25, 2020 9:22 AM
To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [lit-ideas] Re: Slezkine's grand narratives -- a grand pause
The interpretive parts of Slezkine ar ethe weakest of the book, while the
history is between good and excellent imho.
The millenarian aspects have been debunked, in recent years in the Lrb, the
london review of books and many elsewhere.
For instance, Lenin's wife was anything but a millenarian, not to mention....
the vast majority of the pcus-b
Kerem jojjenek maskor es kulonosen masho
palma, a paolo shaul םֹשׁ ְרֵגּ
On Sat, Jan 25, 2020 at 3:16 PM Lawrence Helm <lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Slezkine’s grand narratives are making me squirm a bit – as far as I’ve read,
which is up to page 121, consider for example, “Revolution, in other words, is
a mirror image of Reformation – or perhaps Revolution and Reformation are
reflections of the same thing in different mirrors. The first refers to
political reform that affects the cosmology; the second refers to cosmological
reform that affects politics.”
He then adds, “the view that revolutions aspire to the creation of an entirely
new world while reformations attempt to return to the purity of the original
source is difficult to hold on to . . .
Slezkine continues from the above, “Thomas Muntzer and the Munster Anabaptists
were trying to bring about the fulfillment of a prophecy that had not been
fulfilled. They believed that the way to perfection lay through the
restoration of the Jesus sect, but they had no doubt that what they were
building was ‘a new heaven and a new earth,’ not the old Garden of Eden.”
His crediting various key religions leaders as the authors of the various
religions positions is I think incorrect. As many as I’ve read, none of them
believed they were creators. They all believed they had been inspired by God
to be the means of some act or revelation.
Slezkine here and elsewhere seems to assume the early Historical-Critical
position, namely that the religion of the Jews was entirely their creation. A
supernatural agency is never credited. The modern Historical-Critical
theologians that I’ve read don’t take that position. Some leave the matter
open. Some clearly assume a supernatural agency.
In regard to Slezkine’s main contention in this regard, that is, Marxism and
the Russian Communist development, I haven’t gotten so far in the book that I
can cite the view of Slezkine, but from the literature I recall reading they
(the Marxist and Communists) believed their “cosmology” was strictly
scientific. Marx thought religion was a delusion, “the opiate of the masses.”
Slezkine seems on his way to arguing that it is all, religion and Marxism, a
series of deluded human creations.
In my own “grand narrative” I’ve been following developments of anthropology
and genetics and think we are very early in our modern-human development. As a
species we have existed for at least 200,000 years, probably longer, but only
in the last 15,000 or so years is there evidence that we have been able to
think in ways that are clearly modern. Slezkine authoritatively draws
cosmological conclusions. I tend to believe we are too early in our ability to
think to do that. Reading our own history, no authoritative cosmological
conclusions (based as we like to think upon science) that I can think of have
survived modification or supersession.
Lawrence
