 | This articlerelies excessively onreferences toprimary sources. Please improve this article by addingsecondary or tertiary sources. Find sources: "Alexander Boot" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(October 2021) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
Alexander Boot | |
|---|---|
 2013 portrait | |
| Born | 1947 (age 77–78) Moscow, Soviet Union |
| Occupation | Lecturer, advertising executive, writer |
| Language | Russian, English |
| Notable works | How the West Was Lost (2006) God and Man According to Tolstoy (2009) The Crisis Behind Our Crisis (2011) |
| Children | Max Boot |
Alexander Boot (born 1948) is a Russian-born writer of books and articles, previously a university lecturer and an advertising executive. His work promotestraditionalist conservatism and European culture.
Born in 1948 in Moscow, Boot grew up there in the years following theSecond World War. He is of Jewish ancestry, and his father had spent much of the war as aprisoner of war of the Germans. However, Boot’s father survived to bribe the doctor of the Institute of Modern Languages to gain admission for his son, who was "clever but lazy".[1]
After graduating from theMoscow State University, Boot became a lecturer in English and American literature[1] and was also an art and film critic.
Boot is the father of theMSNBC andCNN contributorMax Boot,[2] who was born in Moscow in 1969. Boot and his wife divorced in 1971. A dissident who was active insamizdat, he left the Soviet Union in 1973,[3] fleeing from the unwanted attentions of theKGB,[4] and in 1976 his former wife also emigrated with their son, settling inCalifornia.[3] In 1975, Boot renounced his Soviet citizenship.[1]
In 1973, Boot settled in the United States, where he worked in advertising. He later pursued this career in the United Kingdom, after moving there in 1988.[citation needed] In England he converted tohigh churchAnglicanism with the help ofPeter Mullen, whose services he began to attend regularly,[2]and in 2015 to Catholicism.
Boot became an occasional journalist in the British news media, writing articles for theDaily Mail, theLondon Magazine, the Salisbury Review andThe Independent, while continuing with his main career in business. However, in 2005 he retired as a company director[5][non-primary source needed] and took to writing full-time, encouraged to write books by his friendDr Anthony Daniels.[4]
Boot's first book wasHow the West Was Lost (2006),[4] in which his principal theme was that the West he had fled Russia to find was disappearing. It had been confident, with a cultural excellence and creativity in art,architecture, and music, which was fundamentally spiritual. Where once there had been such a civilization, together with commitment to religion, there was now only an animalistic pursuit of "happiness" by people numbed by drugs and pop music, living self-indulgently and believing in nothing. The great institutions that had once defended political liberties had given way to the cult of the individual,philistinism, andnihilism.[6]
In 2008, Boot's essay "Political Correctness" was published inThe Nation That Forgot God, a collection of essays edited byEdward Leigh, with work byRoger Scruton,Vincent Nichols,Shusha Guppy,Aidan Bellenger, andMichael Nazir-Ali.The Catholic Times noted that "The nation of the title of this book of essays is, of course, Britain. The arresting title is justified by the intellectual strength of the twelve authors."[7] Later in 2008 Boot's "Life in Putin's Russia" was published inThe Chesterton Review.[8]
In 2009, Boot releasedGod and Man According to Tolstoy, in which he deals with the philosophical and moral views ofLeo Tolstoy, as seen in his non-fiction.[9]
In 2011, Boot launched his own blog, alexanderboot.com.
HisThe Crisis Behind Our Crisis (2011) deals with the moral aspects of theEuro area crisis which followed the2008 financial crisis and has a foreword byTheodore Dalrymple, who says in it that Boot has implacable logic and grasp of history. Reviewing the work forThe American Conservative,Paul Gottfried comments that "Boot explores the metaphysical and moral origins of what are usually viewed as strictly financial questions" and notes that it is "mostly about history, philosophy, and the Christian convictions of the author."[2]
OfHow the Future Worked (2013), a memoir of Boot’s years in Soviet Russia,Owen Matthews has said that the book makes sweeping generalizations and is "exuberant and chaotic, colourful, erratic… not unlike Russia itself."[1]
Boot is married to the pianist Penelope Blackie and spends much of his time at their house in rural France.[2]
| Part ofa series on |
| Conservatism in Russia |
|---|
 |
Politicians |
Literature |
A monarchist,[2] and an admirer of theBritish constitution, Boot finds theWhigEdmund Burke its most brilliant political mind.[10][non-primary source needed] Identifying with traditional conservatism, he has written ofAyn Rand that she "fuses the values of cutthroat capitalism with fascist philosophy and aesthetics… Just like Marx, Rand creates an imaginary economic world that has little to do with reality."[11][non-primary source needed]
Boot has calledliberal democracy "nothing but a mendacious slogan of a virtual world", as it is "neither truly democratic nor particularly liberal", resting on the ever-growing power over people of a centralized state which has dictatorial power.[2] He makes no attempt to defend "real democracy", which in his view leads inevitably to centralization and bureaucratic control,[2] and instead proposes that the right to vote should be limited, with no electoral franchise for those who get more than half of their earned income from the government.[4]
Boot believes the state should be smaller, and people should be self-sufficient. He has also proposed that a return to thegold standard would restore monetary rectitude.[4]
Boot defends the Roman Catholicism of theMiddle Ages and is critical of other forms of Christianity, especially theProtestant Reformation led byMartin Luther andJohn Calvin. He stresses Luther’santisemitism, finding a direct link between Luther andthe Holocaust, and considers that Protestants have pushed the West towards excessivematerialism. He is also critical of theEastern Orthodox Church.[2] Boot considers that theEast–West Schism of 1054, resulting from thefilioque disagreement on whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Son as well as the Father, led to a similar split in attitudes to work, undermining the power of religion and allowing people to pursue happiness regardless of Christian morality.[4]
In April 2012,The Independent quoted Boot as claiming that theUK Independence Party was "the only party that reflects the consensus of our population" on Europe.[12]
Also in 2012,Pink News called on its readers to complain about what they called a "startlingly homophobic" article by Boot inThe Daily Mail.[13]
