Grigory Solomonovich Pomerants | |
|---|---|
| Григорий Соломонович Померанц | |
 Pomerants at a talk in 2009 | |
| Born | (1918-03-13)13 March 1918 |
| Died | 16 February 2013(2013-02-16) (aged 94) |
| Spouse | Zinaida Mirkina |
| Awards | Order of the Patriotic War,Order of the Red Star, the Bjørnson Prize of theNorwegian Academy of Literature and Freedom of Expression |
| Education | |
| Alma mater | Moscow State University (1940) |
| Philosophical work | |
| Institutions |
|
| Main interests | philosophy,culturology,essays |
| Website | pomeranz |
Grigory Solomonovich Pomerants (also: Grigorii or Grigori,Russian:Григо́рий Соломо́нович Помера́нц, 13 March 1918,Vilnius – 16 February 2013,Moscow[1]) was a Russianphilosopher andcultural theorist. He is the author of numerous philosophical works that circulated insamizdat and made an impact on the liberalintelligentsia in the 1960s and 1970s.
Grigory Pomerants was born in 1918 to aPolish Jewish family[2] inVilnius,Lithuania. His family moved toMoscow in 1925. Pomerants graduated inRussian language and literature from theMoscow Institute of Philosophy, Literature and History [ru] (IFLI, MIFLI). His thesis onFyodor Dostoyevsky was condemned as "anti-Marxist" and as a result he was barred from admission topost-graduate studies in 1939. He went on to lecture at the Tula Pedagogical Institute in 1940.[3]
During theSecond World War, Pomerants volunteered to the front, where he fought as aRed Army infantryman. He was wounded in the leg, as a result of which he was assigned as a writer to the editorial office of the divisional newspaper. He was awarded theOrder of the Red Star.[3]
In 1946, he was expelled from theCommunist Party for "anti-Party statements". Three years later he was arrested and sentenced to five years' imprisonment foranti-Soviet agitation. AfterJoseph Stalin's death in 1953, he was released due to a general amnesty. He did not rejoin the Party, which prohibited him from teaching at tertiary level. He was also denied Moscow residence.[2] From 1953 to 1956, Pomerants worked as a village school teacher in theDonets Basin and later, upon his return to Moscow, as abibliographer in theFundamental Library of Social Sciences of theRussian Academy of Sciences.[4][5]
Under the impression of theHungarian Revolution of 1956 and the persecution ofBoris Pasternak, Pomerants became active as adissident. In 1959–1960, he led semi-secret seminars on philosophical, historical, political and economic issues. During this time he established contact with dissidents such as Vladimir Osipov and the editors and contributors of the dissident magazineSintaksisAlexander Ginzburg,Natalya Gorbanevskaya andYuri Galanskov. He also became close to the painters of the undergroundLianozovo group.[6]
On December 3, 1965, Pomerants gave a lecture at the Institute of Philosophy in Moscow publicly denouncing Stalinism.[7][8] It caused a sensation and became one of the early pieces ofsamizdat literature.[5] In 1968, he co-signed a petition in support of the participants of the1968 Red Square demonstration against the introduction of Soviet troops intoCzechoslovakia. He also put his signature toLarisa Bogoraz andPavel Litvinov's "Appeal to the World Public Opinion" in protest ofTrial of the Four. As a result, he was deprived of any opportunity to defend his thesis onZen Buddhism at theMoscow Institute of Oriental Studies.[3][6]
In addition to official articles, which focused on the spiritual traditions ofIndia andChina, Pomerants began to write essays on historical and social topics. While his works were soon stopped from being printed in the Soviet Union, they were widely published in samizdat.[9] They were also reprinted in the western émigré magazinesKontinent,Sintaksis andStrana i Mir, and a collection of essays under the titleNeopublikovannoe (Unpublished Works) was published in 1972 inFrankfurt.[10]
Pomerants' political and social articles as well as his public conduct attracted the attention of theKGB. On November 14, 1984, Pomerants was officially warned in connection with his publications abroad. On May 26, 1985, KGB agents searched his flat and confiscated his literary archive.[6]
Andrei Sakharov, who had met Pomerants in an informal seminar atValentin Turchin's flat in 1970, describes his interests as follows:
The most stimulating speaker at Turchin's seminar was Grigory Pomerants, a former political prisoner and a specialist in Oriental philosophy. I was astounded by his erudition, his broad perspective, his sardonic humor, and his academic approach (in the best sense of that term). Pomerants's three of four talks paid homage to the civilization created by the interaction of all nations, East and West, over the course of millennia. He praised tolerance and compromise, deploring (as I do) the poverty and sterility of narrow chauvinism, dictatorships, and totalitarian regimes. Pomerants is a man of rare independence, integrity, and intensity who has not let material poverty cramp his rich, if underrated, contribution to our intellectual life.
— Andrei Sakharov,Memoirs[11]
Pomerants was among the first Russian disciples ofcultural andliterary theoristMikhail Bakhtin.[12]
For many years, Pomerants was involved in polemics withAlexander Solzhenitsyn. Pomerants strongly criticized what he saw as Solzhenitsyn's dogmatic Christian nationalism and positioned himself closer to the liberal, internationalist wing of theintelligentsia. He countered Solzhenitsyn's notion of "evil" as an unavoidably global, well-established phenomenon, associated with Communism, by citing Eastern traditions which reject the notion of an inherently permanent, ontological evil.[13][14]
Pomerants himself stated that he preferred to be called a "thinker" (myslitel') rather than a "philosopher", since this term does not imply the academic discipline of philosophy, which he felt was merely neighboring his own work (po sosedstvu).[15]
One of the most quoted pieces in Russian by Pomerants reflected his views on the nature of social debate:
The devil is born from an angel spitting in rage… People and systems crumble to dust, but the spirit of hate, bred by the champions of good, is immortal and thus evil on Earth knows no end. In the debates of the 1970s I stubbornly went against all my instincts and impulses to spit in rage, and in this struggle, I found another truth – the manner of the debate is more important that the object of the debate. Objects come and go, while manners form the building blocks of civilizations.
— Grigory Pomerants,Dogma of Debate[16]
Pomerants' lectures and a rejected thesis onZen Buddhism were studied by filmmakerAndrei Tarkovsky and composerEduard Artemyev during their work onStalker.[17][18] Pomerants also appears in the 2008 documentaryMeeting Andrei Tarkovsky.[19]
In 2009, The Bjørnson Prize of theNorwegian Academy of Literature and Freedom of Expression was awarded to Pomerants and Mirkina "for their extensive contribution to strengthening the freedom of expression in Russia."[20]
Pomerants was married to Russian poetZinaida Mirkina. He died, aged 94, inMoscow, Russia.
