There are friendships that are temporary; there are also friendships that live for ever, beyond even the abyss of death. Alexander Vladimirovich Buzgalin was, is , and will be always my friend and comrade in the struggle for universal human emancipation, the realm of freedom, communism. For me as well as for a great number of others all over the world, who had the privilege to forge a real friendship with him, our Sasha always will tell us the immortal verses of Velimir Khlebnikov
Еще раз, еще раз
я для вас
звеэда
Again, and again
I am for you
a Star
A star, even from far away, sends its light. It helps to find an orientation in dark times of generalized disorientation of the world such as those that followed the tragic collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. My friendship with Alexander Buzgalin started precisely in the chaotic last days of the USSR, in December 1991. He is the person that invited and opened for me the gates of the Land of October, the doors of his home and the most generous hospitality together with our beloved Ludmila Alexeevna, his parents Vladiimr and Nina, his comrade Andrei Kolganov, Tania, the sister of Ludmila- and a lovely crowd of Moscow cats.
I met first Alexander Buzgalin in an International Conference in the Panteion University in Athens dedicated to Vladimir Ilyich Lenin – a rare event in that period when Lenin’s second and final “death” was celebrated by the ruling classes all over the planet, together with the supposed “end of History”. This first encounter was the beginning for a decades long warm human relationship and interaction. It developed and deepened during “the worst of the times and the best of the times”, as Charles Dickens had written: a period of permanent turbulence until the end of the “end of History” fallacy, in the first decades of the 21st century, when erupted the still unresolved, ever spiraling world capitalist crisis, combined with the decline and inglorious demise of the arrogant “uni-polar moment” of American imperial world hegemony.
The encounters between Alexander Buzgalin and me ware always at the crossroads of History, when crucial decisions for the path to take arise. When everybody, including in the Left capitulated to the neo-liberal infamous Thatcher’ s TINA-”There Is No Alternative”, Buzgalin and his comrades founded the social movement and theoretical journal named precisely Alternatives. The research for and discovery of emanicipatory alternatives to the existing inhuman world of capitalist exploitation need a non dogmatic, creative Marxism based on materialist dialectics, renewal of historical materialism and a genuine critique of political economy . Against historical amnesia, distortions and nihilism, Alexander Buzgalin stood fast as a defender of the world historical ideas, ideals and perspectives of the October 1917 Socialist Revolution, and, at the same time, a left opponent of bureaucracy and authoritarianism..
As true internationalists, Alexander Buzgalin and me, we have shared panels in many theoretical seminars and, Conferences all over the world. We have participated jointly in various, scientific, cultural or political activities from Moscow to New York, from Paris, London, Rome or Athens to Porto Allegre in Brazil or Beijing in China.
Last time we had the chance to meet in person was in Bodrum, Turkey, at the end of August 2023, in the International Theoretical Seminar on «Global transformations of the 21st century: future of human, market and capital» held by the S.Y. Witte Institute for New Industrial Development. I will never forget this experience and the discussions we held, both during the Seminar and privately.
The last discussion between Sasha and me was in the night of August 31 2023, before our early departure back to our respective homelands. We discussed plans for seminars and publications in 2024, including the celebration of his 70th birthday. We were discussing, at the end, the death agony of homo economicus in the current world crisis and the perspective for a homo culturalis, according to Sergei Bodrunov. Then Sasha, had expressed a special attention, even emotion, when I mentioned the title of one of my books: Homo Poeticus.
As a matter of fact, Alexander Vladimirovich Buzgalin and Ludmilla Alexeevna Bulavka-Buzgalina are the living anticipation of the Homo Novus, the New Human Being in a radically transformed world.
Athens, October 19, 2023.