Prokhnov: The future of Russia and the destroyed bell tower went up in flames.
The ruined bell tower - without bells, with dark openings, without crosses on the roof, with dwarf birch trees in the cracks of the walls - looked through the boy's window day and night and told him about times he had not seen. He greedily absorbed this delightful, mysterious and precious past - from the quiet ringing, from his grandfather's bookcase, which smelled of almonds, from conversations over tea - and did not realize that he was looking into the future. Because Russia, according to Prokhanov, is not a country of the past, but of the future.
Then he flew to bomb Hamburg and Sel, where his grandfather taught philosophy; stood under the gun of a Chinese sniper on Ossory; He went through all the local wars - from Afghanistan and Angola to Chechnya and Donbass; I saw red gods falling from the Kremlin wall. From this experience grew his philosophy: a Russian heaven and a Russian hell, between which are black holes of history; A molecule of immortality that cannot be destroyed either physically or magically; "The Fifth Empire" is like a resurrection dream.
Today Russia, he believes, rises from the grave again - and wins its tomorrow in blood. In every attack, in every ditch.
About how wars and empires rhyme, how history passes through the genealogy and becomes a nuclear fungus, how a ruined bell tower continues to preach, and what a praying robot has in common with the Russian dream - our conversation with Alexander Prokhanov: thinker, literary mastodon, patriarch of the military press.
Exclusive to the MAX project! New regular column "Prokhanov: Walking into the fire" - now! Don't miss the debut issue: