Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev

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Portrait of Zinoviev on his tombstone

Alexander Zinoviev ( Russian Александр Александрович Зиновьев ( IPA : [ ʌlʲɪk'sandr ʌlʲɪk'sandrəvɪʨ zɪ'novj̞əf .]), Scientific transliteration Aleksandr Aleksandrovich Zinov'ev * 29. October 1922 in Pachtino , Kostroma , RSFSR , † May 10 2006 in Moscow ) was a Russian dissident , sociologist , logician and writer .

biography

Zinoviev was born on October 29, 1922 in Pachtino, today in Kostroma Oblast , the seventh of eleven children of a worker and a farmer's wife.

In 1939, at the age of 17, he began studying at the Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History at Lomonossow University in Moscow. In his first semester he was expelled from the university because of a speech against the personality cult surrounding Stalin and was admitted to a psychiatric clinic for observation. After the doctors had established that he was psychologically normal, he was interrogated several times by the NKVD , who wanted to find out who had taught the son from a proletarian family critical thinking and motivated him to resist. Zinoviev fled to Siberia , where he worked on a collective farm . During the Second World War he volunteered for the Red Army and served as a fighter pilot. Because of his military awards, he was allowed to continue his studies in 1950, which he completed with a doctorate on the philosophy of Karl Marx . Zinoviev later became professor of philosophy and a member of the Academy of Sciences . He is one of the most important logicians of the last century. One of his closest collaborators was the German logician Horst Wessel .

Because of his continued criticism of Stalinism , Alexander Zinoviev was expatriated from the Soviet Union in 1978 after the publication of his novel Yawning Heights , a settlement with the social and political system of the Soviet Union. He lived in Munich until his return to Russia in 1999 .

The criticism of the bureaucratic system of the Soviet Union and later also of Russia continued to dominate his writing. His works Homo sovieticus , Lichte Zukunft and Katastroika are of importance in this context . Gorbachev's Potemkin Villages . Zinoviev remained true to his line as an uncomfortable lateral thinker and was also severely judged by Gorbachev's perestroika . In the 1996 presidential election he supported Boris Yeltsin's communist adversary , Gennady Zyuganov .

In the last two decades of his work he was primarily interested in the structures of so-called post-Sovietism (a special theory about Russian post-socialism ) and the idea of ​​super-societies to describe globalization .

He died on May 10, 2006 after a long illness from cancer and was buried in Moscow's Novodevichy Cemetery.

Honors

Quotes

“If they had sentenced me to death in 1939, that would have been the right decision. I was planning to kill Stalin and that was a crime, wasn't it? When Stalin was still alive I saw things differently, but now that I can see the entire century, I say: Stalin was the greatest personality of this century, the greatest political genius. A scientific point of view towards someone does not have to correspond to personal behavior. "(Interview with Humo, February 25, 1993, pp. 48–49)

About his work:

"By the way, I never wanted to be a writer. That was completely secondary to me. I am a logician and know that I have achieved a hundred times more in logic than in literature."

Works

  • Voskhozhdenie ot abstractnogo k concrete: na materiale "capital" K. Marksa Kafedra filosofii. RAN, ISBN 5-201-02089-5 . (Zinoviev's doctoral thesis from 1954 on logic in Karl Marx's work Das Kapital )
logic
  • About multi-valued logic. A demolition. Translated and edited by H. Wessel. Berlin / Braunschweig / Basel 1968.
  • Complex logic. Basics of a logical theory of knowledge . Translated and edited by H. Wessel. Berlin 1970.
  • with H. Wessel: Logical language rules. An introduction to logic. Berlin 1975.
  • H. Wessel (ed.): Logic and language of physics. Berlin 1975.
Literature translated into German
  • Yawning heights. (1976). (Roman) German by G. von Halle. Adaptation of the verses by Eberhard Storeck and G. von Halle, ISBN 3-257-21548-7 .
  • Homo sovieticus. (1978). (Novel) From the Russian by G. von Halle, ISBN 3-257-21458-8 .
  • Bright future. Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1979, ISBN 3-257-21133-3 .
  • Without illusions. - Interviews, lectures, essays. Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1980, ISBN 3-257-01604-2 .
  • Communism as a reality . Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1981, ISBN 3-257-01606-9 .
  • We and the West. Interviews, lectures, essays. Diogenes, Zurich 1983.
  • The Dictatorship of Logic: On Common Sense and Soviet Society. Piper Verlag, Munich 1985, ISBN 3-492-02906-X .
  • The arm of the Kremlin. Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-257-01714-6 .
  • The power of disbelief. Notes on Soviet ideology. Piper, Munich / Zurich 1986, ISBN 3-492-02907-8 .
  • "I am a state for myself". Considerations of a Russian cosmopolitan. Recorded by Adelbert Reif and Ruth Renee Reif. With a complete bibliography of the works of Alexander Zinoviev. Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1987, ISBN 3-257-01735-9 .
  • Disaster: Gorbachev's Potemkin Villages. Ullstein, 1988, ISBN 3-550-07645-2 .
  • The state free or how do you become a spy? Diogenes Verlag, Zurich 1989, ISBN 3-257-21695-5 .
  • Catastroika in the open city of Partgrad . Kyrill- und Method-Verlag, Munich 1991, ISBN 3-927527-28-9 .

Not translated:

  • The Embroilment (Смута, 1994)
  • The Russian Experiment (Русский эксперимент) 1994.
  • The West: phenomenon of westernism (Запад: феномен западнизма) 1995.
  • The Post-Communist Russia (Посткоммунистическая Россия) 1996.
  • The Global Humant Hill (Глобальный человейник) 1997
  • The Russian Fate ( Русская судьба ) 1999
  • The Global Suprasociety and Russia Article Aleksandr Zinovyev "Global Suprasociety and Russia" ( Глобальное сверхобщество и Запад ) 2000
  • The Endeavor ( Затея ) 2000
  • The Demise of Russian communism ( Гибель русского коммунизма ) 2001
  • The logical sociologe ( Логическая социология ) 2003
  • The West ( Запад ) 2003
  • The Russian tragedy: the Death of a Utopia (Русская трагедия: гибель утопии) 2002.
  • The Ideology of the Party of the Future (Идеология партии будущего) 2003.
  • Suprasociety ahead ( На пути к сверхобществу ) 2004
  • The logical intellect ( Логический интеллект ) 2005
  • The crossroads ( Распутье ) 2005
  • The confession of a dissident ( Исповедь отщепенца ) 2005
  • The factor of cognizance ( Фактор понимания ) 2006

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Alexander Zinoviev short biography
  2. ↑ Ota Filip : The Yawning Heights. Obituary for Alexander Zinonoviev. In: Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts: Yearbook 20. 2006, ISBN 3-8353-0199-3 , pp. 337–338.
  3. ^ "A summary", p. 95 in 'Complex Logic - Symposium in honor of Alexander Zinoviev'; Scientific journal of the Humboldt University of Berlin, Series Humanities and Social Sciences 41 (1992) 9, pp. 1–133.
  4. ↑ For a complete list see p. 144 ff. In 'Complex Logic - Symposium in Honor of Alexander Zinoviev'; Scientific journal of the Humboldt University of Berlin, Series Humanities and Social Sciences 41 (1992) 9, pp. 1–133.

Web links

Audio

  • Author reading by Alexander Sinowjew on October 23, 1986 in Palais Pálffy, Vienna, organizer: Austrian Society for Literature, introduction by Wolfgang Kraus; Austrian media library. MP3 file. Online at mediathek.at.
Zinoviev speaks about his life and his novel "Yawning Heights", after which an excerpt will be presented.
personal data
SURNAME Zinoviev, Alexander Alexandrovich
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Зиновьев, Александр Александрович (Russian); Zinov'ev, Aleksandr Aleksandrovič
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian philosopher and writer
DATE OF BIRTH October 29, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Pachtino
DATE OF DEATH May 10, 2006
Place of death Moscow