Ivan Efremov: generations accustomed to an honest lifestyle will die out

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Excerpts from the personal correspondence of the famous Soviet science fiction writer Ivan Efremov.

1969, Ivan Efremov:

All destruction of empires, states and other political organizations occurs through the loss of morality

This is the only real cause of catastrophes in all of history, and therefore, examining the causes of almost all cataclysms, we can say that destruction has the character of self-destruction. Incompetence, laziness and playfulness of "boys" and "girls" in any undertaking is a characteristic feature of this very time. I call it "an explosion of immorality," and it seems to me much more dangerous than a nuclear war.

We can see that since ancient times morality and honor (in the Russian sense of these words) are much more essential than swords, arrows and elephants, tanks and dive bombers.

When honest and hard work becomes unfamiliar for all people, what future can humanity expect? Who can feed, clothe, heal, and transport people? Dishonest, what are they now, how can they conduct scientific and medical research?

1971:

Generations accustomed to an honest lifestyle should die out within the next 20 years, and then the greatest catastrophe in history will occur in the form of a widespread technical monoculture, the foundations of which are now being persistently introduced in all countries, and even in China, Indonesia and Africa.

To think that it is possible to build an economy that will satisfy any human needs, the tendency for which permeates the entire Western (eg American), and ours, in the vulgar and literal sense of "to each according to his needs", fantasy is an impermissible utopia, akin to a utopia about a perpetual motion machine etc.

The only way out is in the strictest self-limitation of material needs, based on an understanding of the place of man and humanity in the universe as a thinking species, absolute self-control, and the unconditional superiority of spiritual values over material ones. Understanding that intelligent beings are a tool for knowing the universe itself. If this understanding does not happen, then humanity will die out as a species, simply in the course of the natural course of cosmic evolution, as unadapted / unadapted for the solution of this task, being supplanted by a more suitable one (not necessarily arising on Earth). This law of historical development is as immutable as the laws of physics.

Desire for expensive things, powerful cars, huge houses, etc. - This is the legacy of the Freudian complex of the psyche, developed as a result of sexual selection. The only way to overcome this complex is through a comprehensive understanding of mental and psychophysiological processes, which has been practiced for 2000 years in India and Tibet. Ergo education and upbringing should begin with teaching psychology as the history of the development of human consciousness and history as the history of the development of social consciousness. Physics, chemistry, mathematics are mandatory, but far from sufficient disciplines for the consciousness of a modern person with its huge population density and, as a consequence, the density of information, with the inevitable brainwashing necessary to maintain the current social order.

To give a 12-14-year-old teenager an idea of himself as the creator of a new, explorer of the unknown instead of the stereotype of a “successful man in the street” that has already been formed by this time, which has filled the entire Western noosphere and is firmly rooted in ours.

Behind the socialist and communist slogans, philistine, philistine greed and envy and the desire for easy money and things have long been hidden.

The same can be said for schools, most of them producing callous and bony graduates, completely devoid of curiosity, which was not 20 years ago. School programs get bogged down in details, instead of creating a system of representation about the world around them, as a result, successful students are "cramps", completely devoid of creative thinking. They enter a university, and then come to enterprises, design bureaus, research institutes, completely devoid of a holistic view of the structure of the world.

Download and read the book of I. Efremov Hour of the Bull

The most mysterious episode in the biography of the famous science fiction writer and professor of paleontology Ivan Antonovich Efremov took place after his death. Efremov died on October 5, 1972, and a month later, on November 4, a massive search was carried out in his house for many hours, and it is not known what subject. Of course, a man of such caliber as Efremov could not allow the Chekists to relax, of course, he had to be looked after. But looking after is one thing, and a search is quite another: here you already need to draw up papers, an order, name a specific reason, honor the Criminal Procedure Code. What they were looking for in the house of the late Efremov remained unclear.

Almost everything that has been known about this story so far, including the people closest to Efremov, has been collected and published in Izmailov's article "The Nebula". According to the testimony of T. I. Efremova, the writer's wife, the search began in the morning and ended after midnight; it was carried out by eleven people, not counting the house of justice and attesting witnesses. His wife kept the protocol of the search, from which it is clear that it was carried out by the officers of the KGB in Moscow and the Moscow region for the purpose of discovering “ideologically harmful literature”. The list of confiscated items was 41 items, including old photographs of Efremov (1917, 1923 and 1925), his letters to his wife, letters from readers, photographs of friends, receipts. Efremov's manuscripts were not among the confiscated, but the attention of the competent authorities was attracted by "an orange tube with a black head with foreign words", "a book in a foreign language with a dust jacket, which depicts Africa and printed:" African ecology homon evolution " into it with dried wood leaves, “various chemical preparations in vials and jars” (turned out to be homeopathic medicines) and other equally important things. They also seized samples of minerals collected by Efremov (he was not only a paleontologist, but also a geologist), a collapsible cane with a “mounted sharp metal object” and a “metal club made of non-ferrous metal” (the protocol specifically noted that it “hung on a bookcase”) … The last two items were not returned later, considering them to be melee weapons.

Such a rich anti-Soviet production apparently deserved half a day of efforts by 11 employees, who, as stated in the protocol, “used a metal detector and an X-ray during the search.” And only thanks to the decisiveness of TI Efremova, the "experts" did not open the urn with the ashes of Ivan Antonovich, which was not yet buried and was in the apartment. Later, T. I. Efremova, who was trying to understand what was the matter, and to return the seized letters and things, the KGB reported that among the seized there was an article of anti-Soviet content - in 1965 someone sent it to Efremov from the city of Frunze without return address. At the same time, in a conversation with the writer's widow, the investigator was especially interested in what were the injuries on her husband's body, and “asked everything: from her birthday to her husband’s death”. And the Prosecutor's Office asked how many years she had known Efremov. On the direct question of what the writer is accused of, the KGB officer answered bluntly: "Nothing, he is already dead."

Subsequently, already in perestroika times, Izmailov managed to meet with the investigator Khabibulin, who conducted the search. But he did not clarify the situation either. True, he answered the main question that worried Izmailov: was there any denunciation that caused the case? Khabibulin assured that no, there was no denunciation. Finally, in 1989, it was possible to obtain an official written response from the Investigative Department of the Moscow Directorate of the KGB to an inquiry about the reasons for the search from Efremov. It turns out that the search, as well as “some other investigative actions” were carried out “in connection with the suspicion arose about the possibility of his violent death. As a result of these actions, the suspicions were not confirmed.” Meanwhile, the search had considerable consequences: the publication of the five-volume collected works of the writer was prohibited, the novel “Hour of the Bull” was withdrawn from libraries, until the mid-seventies Efremov was not published, it became impossible to mention him even in special works on paleontology, although Efremov was the founder of the whole scientific direction. The reasons for the ban remained unclear.