Russia from Moby-Dick to Cthulhu: Roman Nosikov about the eternal fear of the West
Our domestic liberals, who claim to be our intelligentsia, often try to assure us that Russia is of no interest to the West. That we are minor, that we lack competence in what is really important - like iPhone, for instance.
It turns out instead, that the Western World is deeply obsessed with Russia. There is an inimitable passion, which may vary from tenderness and enthusiasm to terror and hate, but the intensity is always there.
Even articles like «Negligible Russia is weak and negligible» or «Helpless Putin gnarls helplessly» betray themselves by addressing the panicking majority, who question the efforts of their elites, aimed at suppressing Russia.
Cultural background
I recollect several occasions of change in the vector of passion.
The fear, which I observed in the 1980-s Hollywood movies about the nuclear war and the «red» expansion, the hatred in parts II and III of «Rembo», first switched to the coarse flattery of «Red Heat» and later merged into the vulgar image of «exotic Russkies», where one could find adventure, and cheap pretty women, like Mexico or colonial India.
The «exotic Russkies» period was long and painful. Marked with our own movies like «Fans», «American Boys» and similar attempts to get a grip on new ideals and ways to happiness, which led basically to one - emigration to a solitary confinement. Be it a fenced cottage, or a virtual kitchen.
The idea of «living the Russian way» and asserting it, existed only among the shameless perverts, who confessed to liking the «Love the Russian way» movie starring Nikita Dzhigurda, DNR citizen, who, at that time, was successfully imitating sanity.
But since about 2004 Russia, once again, began to turn from exotic babushkas, kalashnikovs, vodka and savages into something dangerous. Something, which has to be tamed, suppressed and stopped.
Russia of today is not just a wild and unruly Evil. It is the Ancient Curse falling upon the world, threatening to destroy the order of things and establish an incredibly alien and inorganic rule.
The approach is easily recognizable. These fears and mania were put on paper by the Europeans themselves, and have become an indispensable part of the European culture. Pieces of literature, which describe the phenomena, are integral to the background of a cultured European.
And since the work has already been done, let us pay some respect and attention to the heritage.
Frightening eyes
I am speaking about such masterpieces as Herman Melville’s «Moby-Dick» and H.P. Lovecraft’s «The Call of Cthulhu». There we can observe the mass unconscious of the Western world, as applied to us, - and when we rationalise it, we will see the reason of the specific attitude towards us, which we find strange.
Here goes the direct speech of the Man of the West about Russia:
- ...it was Moby Dick that dismasted me; Moby Dick that brought me to this dead stump I stand on now. Aye, aye,” he shouted with a terrific, loud, animal sob, like that of a heart-stricken moose; “Aye, aye! it was that accursed white whale that razed me; made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!” Then tossing both arms, with measureless imprecations he shouted out: “Aye, aye! and I’ll chase him round Good Hope, and round the Horn, and round the Norway Maelstrom, and round perdition’s flames before I give him up. And this is what ye have shipped for, men! to chase that white whale on both sides of land, and over all sides of earth, till he spouts black blood and rolls fin out.”
…All visible objects, man, are but as pasteboard masks. But in each event-in the living act, the undoubted deed-there, some unknown but still reasoning thing puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask. If man will strike, strike through the mask! How can the prisoner reach outside except by thrusting through the wall? To me, the white whale is that wall, shoved near to me. Sometimes I think there’s naught beyond. But ‘tis enough. He tasks me; he heaps me; I see in him outrageous strength, with an inscrutable malice sinewing it. That inscrutable thing is chiefly what I hate; and be the white whale agent, or be the white whale principal, I will wreak that hate upon him. Talk not to me of blasphemy, man; I’d strike the sun if it insulted me. For could the sun do that, then could I do the other; since there is ever a sort of fair play herein, jealousy presiding over all creations. But not my master, man, is even that fair play. Who’s over me? Truth hath no confines.
Everything is here. Russia is the whale. The whales in that period meant blubber, the whale-oil, widely used by the Western civilisation as the energy source. In other words, as the basis for technological supremacy and self-conceit, the one we can also see today: the echo of Barack Obama’s speeches about America’s exceptionality is still in the air.
The whales are the lands and nations, which were prey for the Man of the West. Like India, China, African and Asian states.
The White Whale is Russia. The prey, refusing to be prey. That being her crime and insult to the Man of the West. The whale sinks civilised ships; the whale challenges the omnipotence of the Western man. The prey denies not only the Western man’s power, but also the legitimacy of such power, because power cannot stand on untruth.
The obsession with exclusivity, self-admiration, self-assertion is offended and demands revenge.
Captain Ahab suspects, that the whale is not an independent creature, but a «pasteboard mask», covering something unbeknownst.
What could that be? A different order. A different truth. Something elder, which has been and will always be. The true Order, independent of what Ahab defined to be the truth and order of the Western men.
The symbol to it is the Ocean. Ancient element, the source of life and death, cradle to whales, coffin to men. The Ocean is God the Father. Alpha and Omega.
Precisely what the Western man sees in Russia. Russia looks at the West with the scary eyes of saints from the orthodox icons, frightening eyes of the Saviour, terrifying eyes of Stalin and Lenin.
Frightening eyes of Vladimir Putin, where, as they say, you can read «KGB».
Russian Bear
The real terror is not in the tsars or rulers. What really terrifies is the being of a civilisation, which does not oppose itself to nature, but grows from it instead.
The Western civilisation identifies itself by confronting ferity, so it marks such civilisation barbaric automatically. Paradoxically, this barbarity has structure, idea, morals, and most important - power and force, pertaining to civilisations only.
A monster, in the Western eyes. The White Whale, Cthulhu, Russian Bear.
The Western Man suspects that the order he imposed is against life and God, but assumes that he can still assert his will.
Yet killing Russia-the-White-Whale is like killing God. Proving that there is no God. No true original order. That the only existing order is the one of the Western Man. Killing God is the only option to proclaim oneself the single measure of all things.
Ahab - is how the West sees itself. His fate - is how the Western Man sees his own fate.
Ahab walks with a bony leg, like Baba Yaga in the Russian fairy tales, - he is half-dead already. A long list of claims and injuries - lost leg, broken masts etc. - is what the West can blame Russia for - recollecting 1242, 1612, 1812 and 1945.
Ahab is the chief of religious fanatics, using his ship and the crew to wage his holy war against the whale. One of the men, Fedallah, prophesies Ahab’s death after his own. Indeed, the whale first kills Fedallah, and then destroys the ship.
Ahab’s turn
The West probably realises that, once Russia is done with their fosterling «Islamic State» (proscribed terrorist group), Ahab comes next. Out of this premonition, apprehension of reckoning comes today’s yet more terrifying image of Russia.
Image of Cthulhu awakened at the bottom of that Ocean.
Why did the Western man need Cthulhu to describe the end of the world? Earlier Apocalypse meant the Judgment Day and the Second Coming. The return of the Father, Creator, true Life and Love to mankind.
Cthulhu is the end of the world perceived not as the cessation of sin, untruth, and disgrace, nor as Judgment, but as a delegitimisation of God. Transformation of Him into a monster.
Apocalypse of John’s Revelation is what Judgment means for someone caring for the soul, someone who knows the Creation is perfect, likewise the Creator. Lovecraft’s Apocalypse is what Judgment means for a consumer, to whom the world is the source of consumption. The world refuses to be consumed, ergo chaos comes.
Frightful Russia, with rudimentary wings and a beard of tentacles, symbolises the world depriving the consumer of consumption. The eternal fear of the Man of the West.