Ideology in Postmodern Time in Russia

Abstract

In strict texts, the general rhetoric of past and present can acquire certain spe­cific meanings. Their choice is determined by the historical size of events and time intervals. In our case, we can talk about the maximum distances, up to the ideologies of postmodernity and even the search for a way out of post­modernity into the hypothetical perspective of Supernovae. If in the great history of civilization Modern is considered the time of ideologies, then Russia has also turned out to be a globally chosen place for the practical and forceful implemen­tation of total megaprojects. These super-large and revealing works of the ideo­logical introduced Soviet Russia into the category, if not the leaders, of all the life-giving pathos of the New Age and the High Modern in particular. The Russian paradox is the unconditional triumph of Marxism as a state, institu­tionalized worldview, but based on absolute criticism of the ideological one. These features require a consistent distinction between ideology as a system of ideas and a system of institutions. Like the constitution of politics by Carl Schmitt through the binary opposition friend – enemy, ideology is constituted in the opposition faith – knowledge, in the spectrum between almost religion and near philosophy. If the task of philosophy is to reveal the non-obviousness of the allegedly obvious, then the mission of ideology is the manual or mass pro­duction of obviousness. Overcoming narrowly political reductionism opens up ideology in its ultimate expansion, distinguishes between systems of ideas and systems of institutions, as well as formats of shadow, latent, diffuse, penetrating, etc. ideology.