Перевёрнутый мир - Лев Самуилович Клейн

A.G.Kozintsev

Leo Samoilov, in his tragic and provocative book on the late Soviet prison community, a member of which he himself was, pointed to numerous parallels linking it with certain late archaic stratified societies. In his view, which is consonant with modem “evolutionary psychology”, deficit of culture causes human behavior to become more natural (in the biological sense) and regress to an earlier stage of social evolution. However, the emergence and rapid evolution of stratification in the prisoners’ community over 130 years, as witnessed by Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Solzhenitsyn, and Samoilov, among others, suggest that the process was historically determined rather than “regressive”. At no stage can the prisoners’ behavior be described as less cultural and accordingly more natural. This raises more general issues relevant for current debates over “human nature”. In my view, no such thing exists. A species-specific behavioral norm is incompatible with culture.

L.S.KIejn

This article on the mal-adaptation of human to the modern culture can be considered as the development of Freud’s idea (in his article on “dissatisfaction with culture”). The cause of this is to be sought in the difference in tempos of biological and social evolution. Man is formed under the impact of adaptation to both the natural environment and socio-cultural conditions, and his physiological properties have changed spasmodically rather than gradually and so man, as a physiological being, on each stage soon becomes in disharmony with his own cultural development and milieu. The GULAG camps provide a test for this inference.

L.S.Klejn

As suggested by the similarities of camp criminal culture to primordial culture, the author defends his idea of the mal-adaptation of man, as a physiological being, to modem culture. In his objection Kozintsev says that the penal servitude originated under the Tsars and developed through four stages. Yet in its first stages (under the Tsars) the aims were only to punish the criminal; in Soviet times its aim was to recompense the criminal via collective labour. But the labour is slavish in the camps, and the collective is itself criminal: so it cannot redeem the criminal. Kozintsev says that there is no natural state of human only cultural states, that without culture there is no human. It’s true, but man is by his nature higher than any animal because he is able to apprehend culture and language. The final inference of the article is that concentration camps must be annihilated.

L.S.Klejn

The paradox of cultural development is in the interplay of continuity and breaks. In the light of information theory the cultural-historical process can be seen as a net of communication stretched over time. Accordingly the breaks in development can be seen as infringements of conditions. These conditions are: the existence of panels (circuit boards), sufficient quantity and quality of channels of information, the repetition of information etc. It remains to find cultural correspondences to these physical conditions. Possible applications of the theory are considered: theoretical (explanation of breaks in archaeological continuity) and pragmatic (the struggle against the evil traditions of criminal society in concentration camps).

СВЕДЕНИЯ ОБ АВТОРАХ

Клейн Лев Самуилович

Известный петербургский археолог и культуролог, доктор исторических наук, подготовивший не одно поколение специалистов. Два десятилетия он преподавал археологию в Санкт-Петербургском университете и антропологию там же и в Европейском Университете Петербурга. Преподавал также в Берлине, Дарэ-ме, Вене, Копенгагене, Сиэттле; читал лекции в Кембридже, Оксфорде, Мадриде, Стокгольме, Осло и других городах. Является автором многочисленных книг и статей по теории археологии, конкретным вопросам бронзового, железного веков и культурной антропологии.

Кабо Владимир Рафаилович

Советский этнограф, сотрудник Института этнографии и антропологии АН СССР, доктор исторических наук, был незаконно репрессирован, эмигрировал в Америку. Автор ряда книг по этнографии австралийцев и по теории этнографии.

Левинтон Георгий Ахиллович

Российский фольклорист и литературовед, кандидат филологических наук, преподаватель Европейского университета в Петербурге.

Гилинский Яков Ильич

Известный петербургский юрист, криминолог-теоретик, доктор юридических наук, профессор, заведующий