Nikolai Karpitsky (1968) - Doctor of Philosophy, Professor of the Department of Philosophy. He completed an internship at the Faculty of History and Philosophy of the Latvian State University (1989) and at the Faculty of Philosophy of Moscow State University (2004), worked at the Tomsk Research Center for Human Rights (1996–1997).
He defended his Ph.D. thesis "The Dialectics of Human Being" (1995) and his doctoral thesis "Transcendental Premonition as a Phenomenon of Human Subjectivity" (2004). Lives in Slavyansk.
What do you see as the fundamental meaning of the current war?
For Ukraine, this is a war for the existence of the state, culture and people. There is no economic or political reason for Russia to wage war. In 2014, Russia invaded Ukraine for no reason, using the Maidan events as a pretext. Now Russia has launched a large-scale invasion also without a reason.
This means that the real causes of the war lie in the Manichaean picture of the world and are of an irrational metaphysical nature. The essence of this picture of the world is that it requires the obligatory presence of an enemy in the world, and if there is none, then it is created and inherent evil is attributed to it.
In relation to the enemy, any moral principles are canceled. Any good done to the enemy is considered evil, and in accordance with this, the entire system of ethical values is turned upside down, good and evil in it change places.
The authorities in Russia attribute evil to the entire West as a civilization, and the conquest of Ukraine is only preparation for a big war with it. Therefore, the war has an existential civilizational character.
How would you define the essence of Russian imperialism historiosophically and metaphysically?
The archaic Russian imperialism of the Third Rome is ordinary, because there were many empires in history, but their time has passed. The revival of imperialism in the 20th century on the basis of the Manichaean understanding of evil led to its mutation and the emergence of totalitarian imperialism in the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany.
The goal of a totalitarian state is to conquer the world in order to free it from evil, which was seen either in social and class nature, or in national and racial. The second mutation of imperial consciousness on the scale of society occurred with the coming to power of Putin and the special services, but it began in the bowels of the Cheka and the NKVD, which perceived the killing of innocent people as a universal method of simplifying the social situation.
From the position of archaic imperialism, power is needed for prosperity. The attitude to the surrounding world as evil turns archaic imperialism into a totalitarian one, from the position of which power is needed for the sake of power. Fear of the complexity of the world turns totalitarian imperialism into necrophilic, i.e. into necro-imperialism, from the position of which power is needed for destruction.
What will be the consequences of the war and the fate of civilization?
Russia will inevitably lose the war, but since the society in it is infected with necro-imperialism, if the colonial system of government is preserved, the war may repeat itself. Either a new dictator will come to power, or the democratic forces will temporarily win, but then the dictatorship will be established in the next political cycle.
The transition from a presidential to a parliamentary republic will not solve anything, since a single center for decision-making and resource allocation will remain. The West sees an existential threat in the collapse of Russia or in a civil war, and therefore can support moderate authoritarianism in it as a lesser evil.
The only way out is if the whole world unites and forces Russia to abandon the colonial governance structure. This means that the distribution of the budget, the appointment and removal of heads of law enforcement agencies should be handled by a federal body consisting of heads of regions elected in free and competitive elections.
Even if imperial sentiments reign in Russia, the heads of regions will still be forced to negotiate among themselves in order to defend the interests of their own region, which will switch their attention from geopolitics to domestic politics and make Russia safe for its neighbors.
