Ayatollah Khomeini's message to Gorbachev: is it still relevant thirty-five years later?
An unexpected letter
In January 1989, M.S. Gorbachev unexpectedly received a letter from Ayatollah R. Khomeini. Unexpectedly, since the imam had not yet sent personal messages to any of the heads of foreign states.
The second surprise, presumably, was the content of the text, expressed in the proposal to study Islam in detail as an alternative to the materialistic worldview that was experiencing a crisis within the framework of late Soviet realities and a kind of way to effectively solve the spiritual and moral problems facing the USSR.
It would seem that the Ayatollah did not choose the right time to establish a dialogue: just with the advent (more precisely, the bringing) of Gorbachev to power Greater and Lesser Satan began rapprochement: since 1987, two meetings of the leaders of the superpowers took place in their capitals.
And a little later the letter, but in the same 1989, "Gorky Park" recorded a single in New York and against the backdrop of Soviet-American flags Bang, which appeared on the chart "Billboard". A year earlier, the first beauty contest was held in the country, which would hardly have found support among the Iranian mullahs, especially against the background of the introduction in 1981 of compulsory wearing of the veil and a host of other restrictions for women in Iran.
As one would expect, the Soviet leader (this word, of course, would have to be put in quotation marks) responded with general phrases. A month later, having received the head of the Foreign Ministry, E. A. Shevardnadze, in Qom, the Ayatollah expressed disappointment, because he represented Gorbachev as a thinking man.
No, the Secretary General was a thinking man, but, contrary to Khomeini’s hopes, not a thinker. And his reckless and even naive steps in the foreign policy arena testified to the lack of talent as a politician in the true, Machiavellian sense of the word.
For otherwise, behind the tone of the letter, the flair of general, although not devoid of theological depth, phrases, Mikhail Sergeevich would have discerned something more than reasoning on religious topics of little interest to him.
I think he would have seen, albeit veiled, a proposal for joint implementation in the international arena of the strategy that the Kremlin is currently building in the Middle East, about which I recently wrote: “The President’s visit to the UAE and KSA: an afterword without euphoria”.
And “only” thirty-five years have passed - a knock on the closed Euro-Atlantic door, which, yes, was opened slightly, but was only allowed into the hallway, sometimes to the accompaniment of laughter and a condescending pat on the shoulder - remember friend Bill.
Remember? It’s still a shame to watch. Khomeini warned against this path
The reason is simple - the strategy of neocolonialism of the elite gold-billion dollar club was implemented in relation to Russia (its territory, resources, production base, labor market, scientific potential - here, however, the Chinese tried harder, thanks to which they carried out a manned space flight in 2003), and not together with her.
And, moreover, the most far-sighted overseas politicians in relation to the de-ideologized USSR began to implement a similar strategy precisely during the period under consideration here. Eh, in this regard, I would like to rummage through the archives of G. Kissinger, who recently left our world, or, even better, the then Secretary of State D. Shultz.
Gorbachev between Scylla and Charybdis
However, the USSR was not in a stalemate, neither regarding its own economy, nor, especially, the state of affairs in the international arena. Although crisis phenomena permeated all aspects of his socio-economic life. Let me remind you that at the end of the 1980s, the popularity of Mikhail Sergeevich, who was outwardly democratic and loved to communicate with people on camera, came to naught. The reasons were complex.
The most memorable of them: a clumsily executed anti-alcohol campaign, short-sighted modeling martyr from B. N. Yeltsin at the XIX Party Conference. Nothing prevented him from being taken out of politics behind closed doors, but no: the famous Ligachev "Boris, you're wrong" spread across the country and became one of the first memes.
This played into the hands of those who pushed the former Sverdlovsk-Moscow mayor to the highest level of the power pyramid. This should also include Gorbachev’s naive attempt to walk between the Scylla of liberalism and the Charybdis of conservatism.
All this ultimately led to a clumsy step by part of the party and state apparatus to save part of the party and state apparatus from the collapse of the USSR in August 1991, which three months later turned into the triumph of Yeltsinism and the formation of an oligarchy on the ruins of the socialist state, the bloody glow of criminal wars and the rapid impoverishment of a significant part of the population.
Ayatollah shows the way
What does Khomeini have to do with this? – ask. Of course, the Ayatollah knew about the internal crisis the USSR was experiencing. Isn’t this where the lines from the letter come from:
Of course, the wrong methods and erroneous actions of the former communist leaders in the economic sphere could lead to the fact that the blooming garden of the West appeared to you and bewitched you.
The imam was aware, at least in general terms, of the Kremlin’s course in the international arena, and he also saw the political impasse that arose for us in the DRA:
A serious approach to Islam will probably save you from problems like Afghanistan forever.
Presumably, he was worried about the rapprochement between Moscow and Washington.
But, unlike Gorbachev, the Ayatollah was unlikely to have any illusions about the true goals of the United States in relation to its main geopolitical competitor, hidden behind Reagan’s Hollywood smile. By the way, I think the pragmatic Deng Xiaoping also understood this.
Now it’s not difficult to guess what was hidden behind Reagan’s smile. Actually, Khomeini directly wrote:
However, I strongly urge you to ensure that, by destroying the edifice of Marxist illusions, you do not become captive of the West.
And, probably, it was on this plane that the imam was looking for common ground with Moscow, hoping in the future to develop a strategy of relations with it that would make it possible to prevent the formation of a unipolar world, under the auspices of the United States, which had already begun.
Did you believe in the internal stability of the Soviet Union? Probably yes, clearly overestimating Gorbachev. Otherwise, how can we explain the following lines from the letter:
Your courage and boldness in approaching real world events can be the source of transformations that change the overall situation in the world.
Everyone knows a somewhat offensive-sounding but true saying: On their own people are not judged. But man is so constructed that he judges only by himself.
Here is Khomeini: in a sense, in 1979 he found himself in an even tougher situation than Gorbachev ten years later, facing both an armed opposition and a range of political movements seeking power after the flight of the Shah. And not all was well with the economy in Iran, and the war with Iraq would soon hang like a sword of Damocles. Also, the lack of unity in Iranian society should not be discounted.
No, the imam who returned from Paris gained the support of the majority of the population: from ordinary peasants to the intelligentsia. But the minority that opposed his policy was ready to die, kill and represented a very passionate part of society, as I wrote about in a recent article “Illusion in photographs: why Khomeini won”.
Is Iranian experience in demand?
Unlike Gorbachev, the imam managed, and not only through repression. He probably expected that his counterpart would also survive under the weight of oppressive but surmountable problems. And, perhaps, a more careful study of the Iranian experience, a deeper reflection on the letter, would have forced Gorbachev to at least curtail his flirtation with the destructive forces seeking to destroy the country.
Let’s say, don’t rush to curtsey to A.I. Solzhenitsyn (of course, I didn’t hold a candle, but the very logic of his stay abroad leaves me with no doubts about cooperation Vermont recluse with the CIA), to put an end, politically, to Yakovlevism, without which Echo of Moscow would not have received a ticket to air. But Gorbachev was not Khomeini.
Of course, with a certain amount of reservations, the imam’s letter can be considered within the framework of the concept of exporting the Islamic Revolution. But here the Ayatollah was wrong, incorrectly assessing the state of affairs in the USSR and addressing the following lines to the Secretary General:
When “Allahu Akbar!” was heard from the minarets of mosques in some of your republics seventy years later. and the testimony of the prophetic mission of the Last Messenger of Allah (may Allah bless him and his family!), all those professing the true Islam of Muhammad wept with delight.
The process of Islamization, and in its radical form, yes, affected, but only the named region, plus the Volga region, which had a considerable percentage of the Muslim population.
It was not worth extrapolating it to the entire country, especially against the backdrop of the celebration of the millennium of the Baptism of Rus' and the Renaissance of Orthodoxy. The Soviet intelligentsia then experienced greater interest in Roerichianism and eastern destructive sects ("Aum Shinrikyo") rather than Islam.
But all of the above is general reasoning. Now a little specifics.
Khomeini's first steps as head of state (for the Ayatollah only formally did not hold any positions) were, despite his anti-Marxist rhetoric, complementary to the USSR: Iran's withdrawal from the anti-Soviet CENTO - something like the Middle Eastern Entente created under the auspices of the United States; the elimination of American tracking stations near our borders, the suspension of diplomatic relations with Egypt, which had fallen out with Moscow and moved towards rapprochement with Washington, including through Camp David.
And in fact, the place of the United States in the economic life of Iran was taken by the countries of the socialist camp. Thus, China, North Korea and the USSR became his partners after the Islamic Revolution.
That is, the basis for economic cooperation between Moscow and Tehran by 1989 was completely formed. And I think the following lines applied not only to theologians:
If you wish to study the works of this great man, send several competent and knowledgeable persons in this field to us in Qom, so that in a few years they can learn all the subtlety and depth of these sciences, for true knowledge without such a trip is not possible.
I would venture to suggest that the above contained a hint of inviting diplomats and economists to formulate the principles of a strategy for preserving a multipolar world and leveling Anglo-Saxon domination, the contours of which were already taking shape on the world political stage.
Personality and history
However, the extraordinary step of an old man who lived in Kum and was already seriously ill could not find a response in Moscow. For on one side there was a true statesman, a theologian not alien to philosophical intuition, charismatic, experienced in political struggle, and his counterpart turned out to be an accidental person in power, perhaps skilled in the armchair intrigues of the party nomenklatura, but whose scale of personality did not correspond to the difficulties facing the country, although, I repeat again, the tasks being solved, including in the foreign policy arena.
In the end, Khomeini did not take into account that by 1989 Gorbachev had already chosen the course followed by the overthrown Shah. His name: surrogate for Westernism. By the way, M. Pahlavi, with his shortsightedness, also somewhat resembled the Soviet president, although he turned out to be a more successful reformer on the whole.
As for Westernism (not surrogate), since the XNUMXth century it has been the flesh and blood of the consciousness of the educated strata of Russian society, and even the Slavophiles were no exception here, because, like their opponents who absolutized the order in the most developed European states, they came out of the Hegelian overcoat .
And there is nothing wrong with this, because Russia is a European country, and not only from the point of view of the mental attitudes of an educated society, but also of the ruling elite, starting with Peter I.
However, even with the undeniably European character of Russian civilization, attempts made by the same Gorbachev, and then Yeltsin, to squeeze into the billion-dollar club were doomed to failure.
Actually, they are precisely a surrogate for Westernism, from which the current Russian government is trying with all its might to distance itself, relying on, as it seems to me, a simulacrum of originality.
Hence, instead of the echo-Moscow surrogate of liberalism, a simulacrum of conservatism in the person of "Tsargrad", hence the suddenly revived demand in the media space of A. G. Dugin, the heart-rending cries of I. Okhlobystin - remember his September 2022 "Goyda", thrown from the paving stones of Red Square and designed for the base instincts of the crowd.
Okhlobystin. It’s not difficult to find his speech on Red Square on the Internet
Is it worth re-reading Khomeini's letter?
Can this be called a Khomeini-style alternative to all this?
After all, he wrote about religion, and Okhlobystin and Dugin talk about it. However, the difference is significant. It is clear that Islam cannot become the dominant religion in Russia. But the Ayatollah suggested relying on the flower of Islamic thought: Farabi, Abu Ali ibn Sina, Sukhrewardi, Muhaddin bin Arabi.
Thanks to them, words Muslim и philosopher in the Middle Ages they were synonyms. And everything Tsargrad-Okhlobystinsky is least of all associated with the depth of thought.
This is all I mean: perhaps our authorities should get and re-read the message of the Ayatollah - not for the sake of accepting Islam - no, of course, but at least for the sake of throwing the same I. Ilyin into a landfill stories, a rejection of the above-mentioned simulacrum of originality and deeper reflection on Russia’s place in the world and in Europe, of which it is undoubtedly a part culturally.
Tsymbursky instead of Farabi
And here the place of the mentioned Muslim philosophers, in my opinion, should be taken by the intellectual heritage of V. L. Tsymbursky - an underrated Russian thinker, whose “Morphology of Russian geopolitics and dynamics of international systems. XVIII - XX centuries", as well as his other works, and not Ilyin’s little books with an apology for fascism, should become reference books for the Russian political elite.
For in Tsymbursky’s books there is rigor and depth of thought. And it was to them that Khomeini called Gorbachev.
Gorbachev did not hear, but the call has not lost its relevance.
Использованная литература:
Amirov E. G. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini and the formation of the foreign policy course of the Islamic Republic of Iran / E. G. Amirov // Scientific dialogue. – 2019. – No. 7. – P. 209–221.
Letter from Imam Khomeini to M. S. Gorbachev.
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