Alexander Zinoviev Quotes

Stalin is not the creator of Russian tragedy, he was only its expression. p. 340

The first words of the inhabitats of Partgrad were offensive words.

While considering communalism as a universal phenomenon, I emphasized that only communist society was totally governed according to the laws of communality. p 424

Russian society before the revolution was torn between three forces: a disappearing nobility system, embryonic capitalism and a state bureaucracy. The latter was so predominant in our "hole" that the mass of the population hardly noticed the other two. For this reason, the February revolution went unnoticed. p. 36

This debate forced me to develop my own conception of these aspects of philosophy. I decided to design a discipline which would encompass as an object of study the problems of logic, gnoseology, ontology, methodology, and dialectics as well as other subjects which touch on the general problems of language and knowledge. I considered the name of the said discipline to be secondary. “Philosophy” didn’t fit. […]. Over time, I began to use the term "complex logic" to distinguish what I was doing from what others were doing. p. 317

... 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.

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

[...] literature plays a sort of ideological role; it instills in men perspectives of humanity. p. 132

When Andropov became First Secretary of Central Committee of CPSU, he ordered the town renamed Partgrad. It’s hard to guess, how long will that name endure.

It is impossible to refute an ideology. We can only weaken or strengthen it depending on whether we weaken or strengthen its influence on people. p. 286

The world once again finds itself faced with crazy temptations and crazy seductions. […] Be afraid of those who seduce you because seducers always deceive! p. 696

La Suprasociété globale et la Russie, Alexandre Zinoviev (trad. Gérard Conio), éd. L'Age d'Homme, 2000

In order to describe a spontaneous historical process, one must appeal to dialectics. To describe conscious-voluntary processes, another methodological apparatus must be used. In this case it is indispensable to know what the social plans (projects) are; how and why they are decided, how they are realized, how, by what means and according to what rules, the social management of people is practiced. This is not in contradiction with the dialectic, it is another orientation of the study of social objects.

Petty-bourgeois thought claims to see its results directly confirmed by observable facts. Scientific thought, on the contrary, knows that its results do not directly coincide with observable facts. They only provide means by which concrete facts can be explained and predicted. p. 35-36

The Stalin Square and Stalin Prospect were renamed Lenin Square and Lenin Prospect. The statue of Stalin was remade into statue of Lenin.