Can Alexander Zinoviev Be Considered Nationally Oriented and Conservative? (Critical Notes on the Works by Alexander Zinoviev)

Abstract

This paper examines the question of whether the Russian thinker Alexander Alexandrovich Zinoviev can be reckoned among nationalist conservatives, and provides a reasoned negative answer. One of the reasons for this is Alexander Zinoviev’s sharply negative and even nihilistic attitude towards the Russian Orthodox Church and historical, pre-revolutionary Russia, which was unthinkable for any real Russian conservative. Therefore, his views could be conditionally labeled as Soviet conservatism. But even here there are nuances that complicate matters greatly, which are discussed in this paper. It is also noted that despite the great hype around the name of Alexander Zinoviev, his creative heritage is still very poorly studied at the moment. The paper briefly considers his creative evolution, his propensity for positivism starting from his dissertation. The pros and cons of his concept of communism as the core of all Alexander Zinoviev’s ideas are analyzed in more detail. The poverty of its basic ideological scheme and its weak prognostic abilities are noted. At the end of the paper, three points are highlighted stating why Alexander Zinoviev cannot be considered a real conservative. Firstly, this is his sharply negative attitude towards historical Russia and Orthodoxy. Secondly, this is the ahistoricism of his project on logical sociology and the positivism associated with it. Thirdly, Alexander Zinoviev became an apologist of the Soviet social system only after it left the stage of history, that is post factum. During the active period of the Soviet social system, Alexander Zinoviev always criticized and satirised it sharply.