Lev Rubinshtein: Many Russians went mad simultaneously

A Russian poet and writer speaks about the war against education in his country.

“You know, many here ask me how many people think approximately what I think. I say this group is not big, but it exists,” he said in an interview with Novoye Vremya during his visit to the Lviv International Book Forum.

Answering the question what is going on with the rest part of Russian society, the poet said everything “is moving in the direction of absurd and alogism, which is a conscious choice”. He thinks everything rational and intellectual irritates many people, even those belonging to the group of intellectuals. Logic and any mention of law irritate people.

“A writer (I don't want to say who exactly) wrote lately on his Facebook page than the annexation of Crimea is illegal but fair. I got interested in this type of logic, in this phenomenon,” Rubinshtein said, pointing at inability to understand the law that were invented to regulate our understanding of justice.

A large number of the Russians suddenly went mad simultaneously. They lost the European coordinate system, on which Russian culture was based, he thinks and adds that it is the entire European culture.

“You may like it or not, but it is an axiom. These talks that we are not Europe, that our culture is not European... But what culture do we have in this case? European culture teaches a thinking person to look at his country from the side. It an effective and productive way of looking. It has been declared hostile recently. Why should we look at ourselves from the side?” the writer says.

Following this logic, he continues, anyone looking at himself from the side is an enemy, a hostile person. If so, Gogol, Saltykov-Shchedrin, Tolstoy, Chekhov, Zoshchenko and many others should be considered enemies.

“It means that it is a war against education or, if you want, against the Russian literary language,” Rubinshtein concludes.