Russian Scientists Welcome LaRouche
by Rachel Douglas
Lyndon H. LaRouche, Jr. and Helga Zepp-LaRouche made a four-day visit to Moscow the week of Dec. 10, during which they attended the International Symposium "Space And Time In The Evolution Of The Global System 'Nature—Society—Man.' " This event was held on Dec. 14-15 and dedicated to the memory of LaRouche's friend, the Russian scientist Pobisk Georgiyevich Kuznetsov, who died on Dec. 4, 2000. LaRouche spoke at the symposium, taking up again "The Spirit Of Russian Science," the topic of his recent paper of that title, which was delivered on his behalf at an earlier Moscow scientific conference, on Nov. 27-28 (see EIR, Dec. 7, 2001).
LaRouche addressed several other seminars as well, including one hosted by Academician Dmitri S. Lvov at the Central Mathematical Economics Institute (CEMI) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, where LaRouche's presentation was called "The Global Financial And Economic Crisis And The Strategic Role Of Russia." The LaRouches also had individual meetings with Russian scientists and politically active persons. On Dec. 13, they were received by Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov. Representatives of the media were in the audience at LaRouche's public events, while the popular Channel 3 TV program "Russky Dom" ("Russian Home") taped its own interview with him. The December issue of the Russian magazine Valyutny Spekulyant (Currency Dealer) had just come out, featuring LaRouche for the second month in a row, this time with an interview about the global financial crisis.
In all, several hundred members of the Russian intelligentsia, including economists, other scientists, political figures, Russian Orthodox Church clergy, and journalists, heard Lyndon LaRouche in person and were able to interact with him during question-and-answer sessions after his speeches. Hundreds of copies of the latest translations of LaRouche into Russian were distributed: a translation in full of "What Is Primitive Accumulation (On Academician Lvov's Warning)" (EIR, Aug. 17, 2001), and excerpts from "The Spirit Of Russian Science."
This was LaRouche's second visit to Russia this year, the first being his arrival to testify at June 29 State Duma (lower house of parliament) hearings, convened by Economic Policy Committee Chairman Dr. Sergei Glazyev, on the possibilities for nations to survive the global financial crash. The exchanges of ideas during those visits deepened the dialogue between LaRouche and the Russian intelligentsia, which has become a scientific and policy-shaping force on a world scale over the past two decades.
There are two reasons for the special power of such a dialogue. One is Russia's status as one of only three national political cultures, in which the leading persons think in terms of their actions making an impact on the whole world (the others being the United States and Great Britain). The second reason, is the special nature of the Russian intelligentsia. LaRouche commented that the participants in the memorial symposium for Pobisk Kuznetsov, represented a higher and broader array of fundamental scientific competence than would be found in any comparable meeting, in any other nation of the world today. "Only in India and Italy," he noted, "do we meet a significant representation of intellectual life, comparable to that in Russia." The Russian scientists persevere in their creativity and intellectual integrity, despite the murderous poverty in which a majority of them live, and which resulted from the imposition of radical liberal economic policies upon Russia in 1991-98.
The Living Memory Of Pobisk Kuznetsov
Russian intellectuals and political figures are following LaRouche's analysis and proposals extremely closely; some of them have been doing so since the early 1980s.
LaRouche's direct conversations with Russian scientists date back to 1994, when Pobisk Kuznetsov hosted LaRouche on his first visit to Moscow (EIR, June 10, 1994). LaRouche had been visited in prison the previous year by their mutual friend, the late Prof. Taras V. Muranivsky, who was to become LaRouche's closest collaborator in Russia. In the intervening years, especially after the Summer-Autumn 1998 turning point in the world financial crisis bore out LaRouche's forecasts and the need for his economic recovery proposals, the scientific work and writings of LaRouche have become better and better known in Russia. At these most recent scientific conferences, involving LaRouche and his collaborators, one after another Russian speaker has cited LaRouche's work, never in perfunctory fashion, but as the source of ideas that have been worked through, and are indispensable for that speaker's analysis of one or another problem of scientific investigation or political and economic analysis. Among them were scientists who now employ the unit of measure La (for "LaRouche"), introduced by Kuznetsov to express LaRouche's concept of "potential relative population density," and analysts who have mastered LaRouche's historical presentation of the deep, principled distinction of the American System of Political-Economy from British Imperial and other forms of monetarist practice.
The International Symposium "Space And Time In The Evolution Of The Global System 'Nature—Society—Man,' " was held at the Russian Academy of Continuing Education for Teachers. Co-sponsors of the conference, which was dedicated to the memory of Pobisk Kuznetsov and the continuation of his work, were the Moscow Academy of Culture and Educational Development and the Schiller Institute. Prof. Yuri Gromyko of the Moscow Academy of Culture and Educational Development chaired the conference organizing committee, while Dr. Nina Gromyko was the scientific secretary of the symposium.
Lyndon LaRouche spoke during the opening session of the symposium, after Professor Gromyko's introductory remarks and a report from Kuznetsov's close collaborator Dr. Spartak Nikanorov, on "The Status And Further Development Of The Scientific Legacy Of P.G. Kuznetsov." LaRouche's remarks, in which he took up the contributions of the universal minds Dmitri Mendeleyev and the Ukrainian-Russian Vladimir Vernadsky, were very well received by the audience of 100 scientists. A lively question-and-answer exchange followed his speech.
During an afternoon panel, Helga Zepp-LaRouche presented her October 2001 appeal for a Dialogue of Civilizations, which has been translated into Russian and was available in several hundred copies. On Dec. 15, Dr. Jonathan Tennenbaum of the Schiller Institute addressed the conference on the topic, "The Content Of Science Is The Process Of Its Development."
The General Breakdown Crisis
For all of his Russian audiences, LaRouche situated his remarks in what Rosa Luxemburg termed the "general breakdown crisis," which is currently under way. He discussed four topics, under that heading.
- The nature of the attempted coup in the United States on Sept. 11, which was stopped—at least for the time being—when Russian President Vladimir Putin telephoned President George Bush and informed him that Russia had stopped the otherwise automatic escalation of mutual nuclear-forces alerts, with an order to Russian forces to stand down. The purpose of this coup, LaRouche emphasized, was to deceive the American population into believing that they were being attacked from outside the country, and thus to force the United States to adopt a policy that the President of the United States does not support.
- The correlation of forces behind the Sept. 11 coup attempt and the policy they desired—the "clash of civilizations." LaRouche explained that the insane "Brzezinski-Huntington" strategy of provoking a clash of civilizations, which has its roots in British Imperial policies of the past two centuries and the legacy of Roman and kindred imperial behavior in still earlier times, went into a new, "live" phase in the Autumn of 1998, as a fear reaction on the part of Anglo-American elites to the disintegration of the financial and economic system on which their power is based. A turning point occurred after the collapse of the speculative GKO bond pyramid in Russia in August 1998, when then-Prime Minister Yevgeni Primakov visited India. In New Delhi, Primakov gave voice to the Anglo-Americans' worst nightmare, when he called for a "strategic triangle" of Russia-China-India to form the basis for cooperation in Eurasia.
- The strategic situation today thus features a confrontation, where, on the one side, the Anglo-American faction (in the United States, traceable to the British takeover of U.S. policy-making after the assassination of President William McKinley in 1901) threatens to launch the "Third Geopolitical War." World Wars I and II may be understood as the first and second geopolitical wars. On the other side, a number of key world leaders, including President Putin, are moving to adopt the perspective of uniting Eurasian nations to meet the needs of all humanity. Because of its unique identity as a Eurasian nation, and because—as a nation that has not been defeated or occupied during recent centuries—Russia is one of the three national cultures in the world, whose elites think in terms of their actions shaping events on a worldwide scale, Russia has a special mission to fulfill in this process.
- The solutions to the crisis of mankind today, lie in the direction of a New Bretton Woods, and Eurasian-centered infrastructure development projects. As LaRouche emphasized in his remarks at CEMI, the Anglo-Americans feared what Primakov put forward, because they know it would work! Sovereign nation-states have the prerogative and the ability to declare an emergency bankruptcy reorganization of the economy, and to create state and state-backed long-term, low-interest credit to finance real development. The development of interior areas, such as western China and Siberia, provide the challenge of developing a frontier, as well as being necessary to generate the resources for sustaining a growing population in Asia and elsewhere.
While immediate measures may be defined to deal with the emergencies facing humanity, LaRouche repeatedly posed the task of effecting a more profound, durable transformation of human social and cultural relations, for which the contribution of Mendeleyev, Vernadsky, and their followers is indispensable. We must change the relations among people, in such a way as to elevate them above the level of so-called "traditional cultures," so that they may locate their identity in the gift they can make to all humanity. Grappling with the scientific tasks of development—such fantastic challenges as the development of the Siberian frontier, which will be the greatest transformation of the Earth's biosphere ever undertaken—makes a profound political impact. Mankind is in a primitive condition, LaRouche said, with respect to what Vernadsky called the noösphere, the domain of noësis or human cognition, the consciousness of the power of the mind to make and test discoveries of scientific principle.
The intellectual and moral enthusiasm, with which LaRouche's second year-2001 visit to Russia was received, found expression in the comment by one senior analyst, who said, "Speaking as an atheist, I pray to God that you become President of the United States."
