Alexander Zinoviev Quotes

You probably know that, in my books, many characters - to make the possible happen - fight against the impossible. But if we gather 100,000 people, if we lock them in an enclosure, if we let them live there for a year while feeding them normally, I can guarantee you that I know in advance what will happen from here there. I can write it down for you somewhere, in a small envelope that we will open in a year, in order to check if I was wrong. Because such experiences are innumerable: every time you try to organize a very large mass of people, the methods of organization are always and everywhere the same. And a year from now, when you find these people locked up, you will find subordinates, superiors, you will find inequality, you will find a mafia and a small local “KGB”.

Furthermore, if people seek power, it is not for power per se, but for the material advantages that their position and influence could provide them. p. 42

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

…[the] historical Stalinism (or simply Stalinism) is the form in which communist society was created in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Stalin, his lieutenants and all those who carried out their wishes and acted in accordance with their ideas and directives (the latter can be described as "historical Stalinists". Communist society is not the product of one man's will. It arose in obedience to objective social laws, which revealed themselves through activity of certain individuals, so that the form they took bears the mark of Stalin and the Stalinists. p. 337

In an interview to Независимая Газета

Western societies were not born in a day. They were formed over the centuries, at the cost of devastating wars, fierce social struggles and enormous human sacrifices. Western values did not come from nowhere either: they are based on religious and philosophical doctrines which are not universal and which therefore cannot be applied to just anyone at any time. What's more, it is not the real Western model that has been implemented here, but its propaganda version.

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

(…) I disagree with the commonly accepted opinion that real communism would be the realization of Marxist ideals and that it would be imposed on the masses, against their will, their desires and their interests, by a handful of people. ideologues resorting to force and lies. Communism is not only a political regime that can be transformed by an order from above, it is a social organization of the population. A Soviet Union was formed, not in accordance with the Marxist project nor at the whim of Marxist ideologues, but by virtue of the objective laws which govern the organization of a large mass of population into a completed social organism. It is the result of a historical creative process in which millions of people took part. (…) p. 13

A western citizen is being brainwashed much more than a soviet citizen ever was during the era of communist propaganda. In ideology, the main thing is not the ideas, but rather the mechanisms of their distribution. The might of the Western media, for example, is incomparably greater than that of the propaganda mechanisms of the Vatican when it was at the zenith of its power. And it is not only the cinema, literature, philosophy – all the levers of influence and mechanisms used in the promulgation of culture, in its broadest sense, work in this direction. At the slightest impulse all who work in this area respond with such consistency that it is hard not to think that all orders come from a single source of power.

Marxism emerged not only with the intention of explaining scientifically everything in the world, but in addition to this, as a representative of the ‘hurt and injured’ classes of the world, expressing thus the centuries old dream of an earthly paradise. But dreams and wishes have nothing to do with science.

It has frequently happened to me to come up against conclusions which, although made by educated people, were no less monstrous in their absurdity. p. 36

Totalitarianism is spreading everywhere because the supranational structure imposes its law on nations. This non-democratic super structure gives orders, sanctions, bombs, and starves.

Communism was an ideal for me. But above all an education system: […]. I was therefore educated and raised as an idealist communist, in the sense that Thomas More, Campanella, Charles Fourier or Saint-Simon understood it, who mean a lot to me. But this communism was perverted and betrayed by the leaders of the Party. The reality I observed did not correspond at all to the ideals of communism.

The dissident movement in Russia, despite everything, remains compliant with the regime. It is a diet product. For my part, I stay outside of this whole society. I don't fight any diet. p. 143

It was prince Igor who decided already many years before Peter the Great to cut an opening to Europe. But as he didn’t know where Europe was, he cut it in a wrong direction, namely to Asia.