Alexander Zinoviev Quotes

The individual is today capable of carrying out an ideological treatment on information received, the effects of which are assured. Science is ultimately content to provide the phraseology, ideas and themes. p. 288

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

Understanding scientific texts requires a long period of specialized preparation and the use of a particular, professional language. Science is aimed at a restricted circle of specialists. Ideological texts are addressed to an entire population, regardless of profession and differences in educational level. To “understand” them (or more precisely to assimilate them), there is no need to undergo special preparation. It is enough to refer to examples from daily life to clarify this or that obscure passage. p. 286

Science presupposes the use of thoughtful, precise terminology, which leaves no room for ambiguity. Ideology, on the contrary, presupposes the use of meaningless, vague, equivocal terms. Scientific terminology does not need to be analyzed or interpreted. Ideological phraseology must be commented on, compared, rethought. Scientific assertions assume that we can at any time confirm them, refute them, or even in extreme cases, recognize their insoluble nature. The absurdity of ideological propositions means that they can neither be refuted nor confirmed p. 285

The petty-bourgeois mind considers the lives of others as if it were in their situation, transposing onto them its attitude, its criteria of judgment, its feelings. p. 37

This way that petty-bourgeois minds confuse their subjective assessments with the objective situation goes so far that the majority of notions used in conversations about social problems have currently lost their scientific character to become simple expressions of estimation. . p. 37

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

The petty bourgeois is inclined to pass off what he feels as the truth. p. 36

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 man who thinks like a scientist seeks not only to note the facts, but also to analyze them taking into account their chance or their necessity, he tries to analyze the laws that immediate observation does not discern and to 'eliminate the influence of one's own inclinations on the results of one's reflections. 35

The man who thinks like a petty bourgeois notices directly observable facts and immediately draws hasty generalizations without the slightest analysis. His judgments are subjective, that is, they bear the mark of his personal inclinations. p. 35

From a petty bourgeois point of view something normal and natural is "something" good. this type of thinking makes no difference between the subjective appreciation of phenomena and their objective qualities. p. 35

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

Historical consciousness is condemned, for its part, to take everything at face value; she sees the origin of communist society in the action of supporters of communist doctrine and links the development of opposing forces to the action of its enemies. She is, for example, incapable of understanding that without the help of representatives of the privileged strata of the old Russian society the new society would not have been able to last a year. p. 41

Millions of people participated in the historical process that gave birth to the communist society of the Soviet Union. These people have performed billions of different actions. They accomplished them in their own interest. They acted according to the laws of community conduct and not only according to the laws of history, which do not intervene in the conduct of individuals. Some of these actions worked in favor of the new society, the other against. Sometimes the same actions worked either in favor of this society or against it. The supporters of the new societies have not always necessarily acted for it, and conversely its adversaries have not always harmed it. The revolutionaries have done a lot against the revolution and the counter-revolutionaries a lot in its favor, without realizing it. p. 41