The Thinking Reed

Burlatsky’s ideas are thus radical enough, but he does not contemplate their fulfilment otherwise than through a rationalization of the existing statocratic system; and, consequently, he accepts all the rules of the game. In his books every original and fresh idea appears like a gold coin in a heap of rubbish; every scientific conclusion is situated amid a mess of lying ideological verbiage, whose emptiness the author appreciates even better than the reader.16 He is obliged not only to put up with the usual restrictions imposed by the censorship but also to talk in bureaucratic language; this means that his ideas cannot be expressed plainly. Burlatsky’s practical work in the state apparatus was no more successful than his theoretical work; he remained a reformist without reforms. This tragedy of technocratic reformism he tried to describe in a book with the expressive title The Riddle and Lesson of Niccold Machiavelli. In writing about the great Florentine, the author essentially drew a psychological portrait of himself.

The picture presented to us is roughly this. The state requires loyalty, above all, but the expert, the adviser, endeavours to serve the state while preserving his independence and not becoming the state’s slave. The expert is essentially apolitical, alien to any ideological sympathies: ‘Be clear about this — I am not for anyone in particular, I am for everyone. I am an adviser: an adviser, nothing more.’17 But the state does not want independent advisers, it wants people who will promote its policy and ideology. The rulers fear that the adviser wants to share their power, to lay claim to their rights. The opposition also requires him to perform ideological acts. The position of the ‘pure expert’ becomes hopeless.

The rulers do not tolerate his independence, while the people have not yet matured to the stage where they can use his services; have not yet become a political force with which Machiavelli-Burlatsky can collaborate and which needs his collaboration. The state is still the only political force in society. As professional politicians, neither Burlatsky nor his hero can simply ‘retire’. They have to play to the end their tragic game with the authoritarian state. This is why the republican Machiavelli turns to the ‘princes’ and the democrat Burlatsky to aged bureaucrats (it is well known that it was he who dubbed the Soviet leaders a ‘gerontocracy’, describing the system of rule within the CPSU as rule by old men). For Machiavelli-Burlatsky the tragic conflict is bound up with their understanding of the need for changes together with inability to find an agent capable of effecting these changes, a force that can change something: ‘In the course of these quests he passes from hope to delusion and disappointment, from confidence in the real possibility of success to understanding of its complete hopelessness.’18

At the end of the book the author himself enters, and Machiavelli gives him a lesson in politics. The conversation between the two is conducted in absolutely ‘Soviet-Russian’ language, which makes the whole dialogue resemble a scene from the theatre of the absurd:

author: Your occupation?

NICCOLÓ: Official. Diplomat. Publicist. Historian. Writer…

author: Sorry, I’ll be more precise: your vocation?

NICCOLÓ: Reformer.

author: Reformer of what?19

The trouble is that both Niccolo and the author have spent their whole lives trying to effect reform from within the system, which has proved to be unreformable (by their methods, at any rate). Nevertheless, the political failure of reformism is, for Burlatsky, not equivalent to complete shipwreck:

author: So, then, did you succeed in your reforming activity?

NICCOLÓ: We awakened ourselves and gave new life to Time.20

If the reformers were listened to, it was certainly not by those whom they were addressing. They tried to influence members of the ruling statocracy by showing them that timely reforms were the best way to safeguard their power, whereas a conservative policy would eventually undermine it. They warned that ‘standing firm on the maintenance of a status quo which has been overtaken by the course of development will lead directly to the shattering of the system.’21 But the warnings were in vain, for the conservative statocracy is its own gravedigger.