Viktor Trostnikov, a scientist and philosopher from Moscow, recently paid a visit to Washington, DC. A decade ago he was fired from his job as professor of higher mathematics at the Moscow Institute of Railway Engineering, for participation in the almanac Metropol, and he currently earns a living as a mason. He is the author of Thoughts Before Dawn (Paris, 1980), an extremely interesting critique of some of the fundamental tenets of positivism and Marxism in light of the latest discoveries in quantum physics. Thanks to the spirit of glasnost and perestroika, Trostnikov was allowed to come to the US for a few days to take part in the celebration of the millennium of Russian Christianity. Here is his assessment of what constitutes the totalitarian disease of Soviet society.

“The patient must be treated for his ailment, not for its symptoms. And since we fell ill at the spiritual level, the treatment should be administered at that same level. If the authorities are really eager to save the nation, they must above all recognize the divine origins of man. Until they do, whatever they undertake is doomed to be an exercise in futility . . . Today, our most pressing need is neither free enterprise, nor the broadening of glasnost, nor even human rights, but an official admission that Marxism was a pack of lies and Stalinism a cruel hoax . . . The rest will follow automatically . . . Today, we must not concentrate on derivative things, but on the fundamentals from which they spring forth.”