Alexander Zinoviev Quotes

I have always been surprised that cultured people with important factual data produce, on large-scale social phenomena, conclusions that are insignificant, superficial or distorted to the point of becoming absurd.The conditions of my existence and the relationships I have maintained with those around me have forced me to do the opposite: to formulate vast generalizations based on the observation of a limited number of “small” events. Over time, I discovered that these "little things" are precisely the foundations of the historical process and that, from a social point of view, the apparently grandiose phenomena are only the dross. Dialectical notions like essence and phenomenon, content and form have been very useful to me. p. 195

In the present case the man who reasons as a historian is only a petty bourgeois in disguise. p. 42

It is, in principle, impossible to understand our life and our mental functioning if we are not a dialectician. However, dialectics is fundamentally foreign to Western man, whether he is a “thinker” or not. p. 353

Communism was so organic for Russia and had so powerfully entered the way of life and psychology of Russians that the destruction of communism was equivalent to the destruction of Russia and of the Russian people as a historic people. [...] In a word, they [the anti-communists] aimed at communism but killed Russia.

Nothing takes root so well in people's minds as misconceptions that become prejudices. Ignorance is strength ! p. 673

... Russia has made a breach in the world evolutionary process, discovering a new direction of social evolution, qualitatively different from the Western direction. On this way Russia has achieved colossal successes. It has found the solution to the most fundamental social problems, in principle unsolvable in the Western way. It has become a real communist competitor to the Western variant of human evolution.

The members of the commission flew to Partgrad the very next day – it was an unprecendented case in the Soviet Union. During the Brezhnev era, it would have taken a couple of months for all the discussions, after which the commission would have flown for a holiday to the Crimea or Caucasus in a body. And really, why should one fly to a certain Partgrad if everyone knows that all those ‘Lighthouses’ are mere swindle.

According to a well-established opinion, kolkhozes were invented by Stalinist villains out of purely ideological considerations. Pure nonsense! The idea is not Marxist, it even has nothing to do with classical Marxism. Far from being a fruit of theory, it emerged in practical life as the product of a very real, nothing less than imaginary, communism. Ideology was only a means of justifying a historical evolution. p. 68

La grande rupture - sociologie d'un monde bouleversé, Alexandre Zinoviev (trad. Slobodan Despot), éd. Éditions l'Âge d'Homme

Which means that we are seriously mistaken when we hope to see science play a role as an instrument of progress and civilization.

We must in our assumptions start from this axiom that the war will be global and lasting. All means of annihilation will be implemented, without any restriction. Preparing for real war must not be reduced to intervention and the improvement of a super-weapon. [...]

Communist totalitarianism was sensitive to criticism from the West, and the West was also influenced by communism, particularly through its communist parties. Today we live in a world dominated by a single ideology, a single fact, by a single globalist party.

Whatever the case, the community phenomena themselves are general, universal. They are determined by the simple fact that a fairly large number of individuals find themselves forced to live, over generations, forming a whole, a community. (…) These community phenomena are in turn governed by certain objective laws. p. 14-16

... the masters of the global supra-society continue Hitler's work, but using the much more powerful means of contemporary science and masking their aims under the label of democracy.

After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe, a massive attack on the social rights of citizens was launched in the West. Today the socialists who are in power in most European countries are pursuing policies of dismantling the social security system, destroying everything that was socialist in the capitalist countries. There is no longer a political force in the West capable of protecting ordinary citizens. The existence of political parties is a mere formality. They will differ less and less as time goes on. The war in the Balkans was anything but democratic. Nevertheless, the war was perpetrated by the socialists who historically have been against these kinds of ventures. Environmentalists, who are in power in some countries, welcomed the environmental catastrophe caused by the NATO bombings. They even dared to claim that bombs containing depleted uranium are not dangerous for the environment, even though soldiers loading them wear special protective overalls. Thus, democracy is gradually disappearing from the social structure of the West. Totalitarianism is spreading everywhere because the supranational structure imposes its laws on individual states. This undemocratic superstructure gives orders, imposes sanctions, organizes embargos, drops bombs, causes hunger. Even Clinton obeys it. Financial totalitarianism has subjugated political power. Emotions and compassion are alien to cold financial totalitarianism. Compared with financial dictatorship, political dictatorship is humane. Resistance was possible inside the most brutal dictatorships. Rebellion against banks is impossible.