Hannelore Fobo

Sergey Kuryokhin: Improvisations and Performances

page 10 • Revolution: a question of style?

Kuryokhin’s and Dugin’s positions were by no means congruent in all areas. We have already seen that Kuryokhin did not adhere to Dugin’s “pre-Western” stance when it came to his own artistic work. As discussed in the previous chapter, Dugin believed that Christ’s mission had been one of imparting “national grace” to Russia, and although this was of fundamental importance to him at the time of his friendship with Kuryokhin, it seems that Kuryokhin gave no particular weight to this religious concept: at least, no reference to this concept was evident in any of the interviews or texts available for this research. This is perhaps not surprising, bearing in mind that Kuryokhin’s propaganda that referred to “Religion with a capital R”[1] originated from the NBP and Crowley.[2] Whatever the case may be, it demonstrates that not all of Dugin’s positions were essential to Kuryokhin.

But just how credible was Kuryokhin’s attempt at amalgamating the NBP with his art? The review published in Rock Fuzz, which was actually favourable with regard to the performance as such, asks this question:

There was also—well, how shall we put it? – not exactly a “fly in the ointment,” but still… There were, so to speak, political overtones.  First, the whole event (judging by the poster) was addressed to Kuryokhin’s current comrade-in-arms, the deputy for the 210th Northwestern constituency, Alexander Dugin. Second, the leader of the National Bolshevik movement Eduard Limonov also took part in the Pop-Mekhanika. As a consequence, the notorious newspaper Limonka and other "red" trash were distributed in the foyer: "Come all ye discontented, radical, bold, and unbroken, and we shall give you a job to do."
What is this “job”? And what does it have to do with music? Does it stand for bringing paranoid ideas to life, for flirting with the “bright new world," or for a performance of Moscow comedians on the St. Petersburg election stage???[3]

Kuryokhin’s own statements notwithstanding – Alexander Kan stated that “He said that he found National Bolshevism deeply and seriously convincing”[4] – not everybody found the idea that Kuryokhin’s political engagement was serious convincing. His legendary 1991 “Lenin is a Mushroom” TV interview, where he improvised concerning Lenin’s alleged psychedelic transformation into a mushroom, earned him a reputation as an ingenious satirist, and his appearance at the NBP press conference in May 1995 could be interpreted in precisely the same way.

On 22 September 1995, one day before “Pop-Mekhanika 418” took place, Saint Petersburg writer and journalist Mikhail Trofimenkov published an article entitled: “Red Magic, or ‘Hi, Girls…’” subtitled: “Russian postmodernism: lost innocence”. In his article, Trofimenkov scathingly criticises the “conservative revolutionists’” intellectual prowess and discusses Sergey Kuryokhin’s and artist Timur Novikov’s[5] support for the National-Bolshevik Party. This is his comment about Kuryokhin:

The National-Bolshevik Sergey Kuryokhin, who has lately been suffering from unlimited personal opportunities, in combination with his limited imagination, is obviously feeling bored. Why should one consider Pop-Mekhanika’s swallowing of the National Bolshevik ideology into its unfathomable womb as something more significant than Eduard Khil’s or Vanessa Redgrave’s participation in his show?[6]

He comes to the conclusion that:

With regard to our heroes, we can exclude any ideological reasons for their entering politics. Only aesthetic reasons remain. After all, what has our political life constituted over the last two to three years other than a huge happening, a festival of vanities?[7]

Trofimenkov’s doubts about the sincerity of Kuryokhin’s motives stimulated NBP member Dmitry Zhvaniia to interview Kuryokhin shortly afterwards, so as to allow Kuryokhin to explain his point of view. The following extract from this interview (also referred to previously) quotes Kuryokhin:

The NBP is a totally new ideology, religion, and culture; it represents those on the right striving to move to the left, and those on the left striving to move to the right. Putting it roughly, the concepts of “left” and “right”, “up” and “down” have no meaning whatsoever when it comes to the National Bolsheviks. Any semblance of dualism has been completely eradicated. This is of fundamental importance. This is what Dugin calls a “conservative revolution”.[8] 

For Kuryokhin, the key term is “revolution”. Trofimenkov was right in saying that for Kuryokhin, adhering to the NBP was a matter of aesthetics, because in Kuryokhin’s understanding, “revolution” is a question of style:

We need to apply different criteria to the NBP than the criteria that are generally applied to parties. National-Bolshevism has a fresh feel to it […] It is able to utilise any aspect of culture – what matters is that there’s always a sensation of something fresh, a sensation that a new style is in use. Achieving a new style is far from straightforward. […] You see, style actually is the essence. And having a style that is ever new requires that our ideas undergo unending revision. The principles of “conservative revolution” hit the nail on the head.[9] [10]

However, whereas for Kuryokhin, the style and the essence are one and the same, for Trofimenkov, Kuryokhin’s style amounts to a festival of vanities. But does Kuryokhin’s style really just amount to a show, as Trofimenkov claims?

When it comes to the consequences of the “conservative revolution,” these consequences will be seen not only on the stage, but beyond it – because if style equates to essence, then the essence in question equals total destruction prior to the construction of a “strict totalitarian dictatorship”, as Kushnir writes:

According to Kuryokhin, art must be subjected to strict totalitarian dictatorship. Art will then be projected into the realm of politics so as to build a new totalitarian state. It only requires the targeted action of a certain number of people for everything to be destroyed to a point where things can never be put back together. At the moment, politics merely has an influence on culture, but if a strict totalitarian regime were established within culture itself, this would gradually come to determine the direction of politics.[11] 

In other words, the destruction in view amounts to more than a second October Revolution; it is actually a second Deluge. According to Dugin’s interpretation of Crowley, “the era of true postmodernism will arise… without any groaning or compromising.”[12]

This how Alexander Kan sees his friend’s political ideas:

I think that Sergey’s aim was to transfer his crazy method of assembling and organising material from the realms of art experiments to politics – all the more since he himself and some others (myself in particular) thought that his artistic methods, at that point, had led him to a dead end. I am talking of Pop-Mekhanika’s gigantomania, which included trucks, military vehicles, huge orchestras, and everything short of helicopters. It had reached a point of absurdity.[13]

Kuryokhin might well have wanted to “transfer his crazy method of assembling and organising material from the realms of art experiments to politics”. Yet, if this be so, there would hardly have been anything left for politics to assemble or organise – considering Kuryokhin’s desire for “everything to be destroyed to a point where things can never be put back together”.

Did Kuryokhin imagine the world as a huge Pop-Mekhanika performance whereby he himself was the conductor, and imagine that this would provide him with some kind of malicious pleasure – releasing the forces of antagonism, and leaving him to watch everything fall apart? Was he aware that beyond the stage, destruction implies self-destruction, if not physically, then morally?

For better or worse, a revolution did not take place, but if we are to believe Kuryokhin’s words, he was willing to accept self-destruction, should it so happen:

After all, what is romanticism? It is defined by revolting against the existing order and proposing values that today seem unacceptable. Ideally, romantics end up perishing. […] But someone has to come out with the wild ideas in the first place. Otherwise culture just comes to a standstill. Nothing more will come to pass in life and humankind will simply die out. [14]

What are the values referred to “that today seem unacceptable” and that he set out to defend in a romantical fashion?

If what Kuryokhin had in mind was his “antithetical thinking”, he clearly did not apply it to himself: he would not have changed sides. He was willing to be the leader, but not the slave. In this respect, it would appear that Crowley’s magic “abrahadabra” or “418”, which Kuryokhin presented on stage with such fervour, were really just part of a show.

In his New Year Op-Ed column for the magazine OM, Kuryokhin softened his remarks on revolution; the way he discussed revolutionaries from the past made it appear that the revolutionaries were to him merely a favourite topic of conversation when discussing lofty themes – no more. Starting with an attack on Moscow bohemian nightlife, he then goes on to explain why things are different in Saint Petersburg:

[Man] must create his own destiny and create genuine moral values; he must be implacable towards his enemies, and engage in self-improvement. […] Yet this is not something to be achieved through discotheques, but via true knowledge, and via belief in progress and science. […]

In Petersburg, discotheques and magazines are nothing more than an occasion for people to get together and discuss lofty themes. This follows a tradition: to sit at the “Saigon”[15], talking over a glass of wine about Dante, Tyutchev, or Ogarev. Ogarev and Hertzen also drank a great deal, but this was not what it was all about. Just take into account the “Kolokol” newspaper[16] and “My Past and Thoughts”.[17] [18]

What Kurykhin goes on to offer his readers is not a revolution, but a new educational programme. Referring to Timur Novikov’s “New Academy of Fine Arts”, Novikov´s ideological Pop-Art project from 1989, he actually pretends that this was a genuine academic institution, and states:

Here in Petersburg, we are about to complete the refurbishment of the old premises of the University of National-Bolshevism, and, starting from the new semester, students will be attending classes in bright, spacious halls. A few ordinary members of staff have been replaced, and, due to [state] repression, the body of professors and lecturers has been completely replaced. The academic, Novikov,[19] has been given an honourable discharge (with his post being taken by the legendary academic, Medvedev). The programme of physical training has been improved. New disciplines have been introduced: the metaphysics of blood, the History of Holy Inquisition, the Facultative [sic] of the Lives of Outstanding People (Guénon, Renan, Crowley, Browley, Mahomet, Lafayette, and Bachofen).[20]

The effect of this article was that Kuryokhin was enthusiastically sabotaging his own attempt to present himself as an intellectual seriously engaged in changing the world for the better, as set forth in his PM No. 418 press conference some months earlier:

We have reached a point in time when the crisis in art is so evident (indeed, not only in art, but also in religion, ethics, and morality), bringing an end to a lengthy epoch in the life of mankind. Becoming aware of this is one thing, but declaring it is quite another. And everything I am going to be doing in the near future and, hopefully, beyond that as well, will be all about declaring how I see this and about the possible exits from the situation that has arisen. I want to stress once more that it is not about promoting specific religious ideas but of promoting every type of religion extant in nature (while not specifying any particular nuance), while also being about forming a particular worldview based on these religions and about the search for ways to set in motion movements promoting the future development of art.… I am deeply convinced that art is no longer equipped to get by with the same ideas it has been proclaiming over so many years. This has to do with the crisis in Christianity and in Islam, and, indeed, in all other existing religions…[21]

Comparing both statements, we may conclude that, just as with Kuryokhin’s earlier Pop-Mekhanika performances, a good “styob”, or parody, was of greater value to Kuryokhin than than the pursuit of his ambitions in a scrupulous, consistent manner. Kuryokhin’s predilection for verbal “styobs” is analysed in part two of this paper, entitled “Pop-Mekhanika in the West”.[22] Yu. Vorotnikov defined the “styob” (or “stiob”) as a counterweight to or defence against the pathetic official political “newspeak” of the Soviet period:

“Styob” became the home of both a new, dissection-based way of thinking and of a new ‘oppositional-destructive’ way of being. Herein lies its important role in the annihilation of “newspeak” – the GULAG of existence and thought[23]

In his rhetoric, Kuryokhin remained attached to his habits dating back to Soviet times, both in terms of the way he developed bizarre “oppositional” projects and the way he employed parody in order to oppose seriousness. These habits had become part of his personality and “a question of style”. He had successfully applied this approach when it came to creating his “antithetical” Pop-Mekhanika performances, which, in conceptual terms, did not tolerate any seriousness. What were the chances he would now be able to convince the public of the contrary?

It is no wonder that during Pop-Mekhanika No. 418, Kuryokhin did not himself read out Crowley’s and Dugin’s texts, neither is it surprising that he entrusted what he intended in terms of the application of his fantastical revolutionary plans to those he found more competent in such matters: Limonov and Dugin. Still, this would not have been enough to resolve the problem of his own credibility – at least not in view of the way he later described the “University of National-Bolshevism” as a kind of “Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry” – with “Crowley and Browley” as its inspirators.