The methodology of history and the scheme of the genesis of the revolution in Russia by M.Ya. Gefter (comments on his works "There will be no Third Millennium" and "Stalin died yesterday")

Rozin Vadim Markovich Doctor of Philosophy Chief Scientific Associate, Institute of Philosophy of the Russian Academy of Sciences  109240, Russia, Moskovskaya oblast', g. Moscow, ul. Goncharnaya, 12 str.1, kab. 310 rozinvm@gmail.com Other publications by this author

Introduction

I have only recently read these works and was very impressed: I have never seen anything more significant and interesting concerning the historical and philosophical understanding of the revolution in Russia (its prerequisites, 17th year and subsequent events), and Mikhail Gefter's ideas about the methodology of history look very modern. I wanted to see the criticism and comments on Gefter's works. Surprisingly, there is almost nothing, except for a few articles by S.S. Neretina and two or three more works. And this is despite the fact that, in my opinion, the views of the author of "There will be no Third Millennium" are not just modern (he left us in 1995, i.e. 30 years have passed), but to a certain extent represent a challenge to Russian historians, and his considerations on the methodology of history and the scheme of revolution in Russia are not not only to history, but also to modern philosophy and social psychology, and because of its originality, it needs to be understood.

One more thing struck me. Although I got acquainted with Gefter's research literally in recent months, and before that I had only heard that there was such an interesting historian and philosopher, nevertheless, it turned out that some of the tasks he set (for example, explaining the role of the discovery of death in the origin of man, cultural interpretation of history, analysis of the meaning of personality, dialectic of historical patterns and singularities), were also my tasks, which I consistently solved over the years. It was as if I had taken over the baton from Mikhail Gefter. I'll start with the problems I had when reading the two papers mentioned in the title. At the same time, I will quote Gefter a lot, because, firstly, I do not want to attribute my thoughts to him, and secondly, let the readers themselves judge whether I understand Gefter correctly. In this case, quotes are not so much a confirmation as a method of comprehension.

Problematization

Gefter does not just talk about the personalities of Lenin and Stalin, but offers a reconstruction of the evolution of these personalities, including reflections on the nature of their actions and decisions. There is a certain incongruity: these reconstructions go far beyond the limits of historical interest, there are psychological and philosophical narratives, reflections and generalizations. It looks as if it were not just about the role of the individual in history, but about the logic of history itself; history begins to obey the search for solutions and the actions of these subjects, who possessed great power. Two questions arise: are such reconstructions unnecessary for understanding history, does Gefter find himself in someone else's mental territory (psychology and philosophy), and also how history should be thought in this case?: as a history of powerful personalities, or are the latter in demand only to the extent that objective (intersubjective) conditions exist for them. Then the actions of these individuals are just the actions of other, deindividual (nonpersonal) entities and processes (economic, social, cultural, etc.).

"The last action of my sector," recalls M. Gefter, ‒was a collection about Lenin, scattered in the layout. It contains my article, which served as the final reason for my excommunication from Soviet science. The epigraph from Pasternak was considered inappropriate, to say the least. "He controlled the flow of thoughts, and only because of that ‒ the country." They said it was tactless to write about Lenin in this way, and the article, although it remained misunderstood by them, was considered revisionism. One important person on the Old Square, who had previously patronized me, Anatoly Chernyaev, said: “Mikhail Yakovlevich! This is no longer a new interpretation of Marxism ‒ it's yours!” And after that, he forgot my address and phone number for years."^[3]

An additional question to the topic of reconstructing the personalities of Lenin and Stalin. They differ in terms of values: Gefter is clearly sympathetic to the first, seeing positive intentions and realistic solutions in his search (recognition of the diversity of Russian culture, the introduction of the New Economic Policy, the approval of a separate path of revolution for Russia and different from the general world plan), and his attitude towards the second, although objective, is quite negative. Lenin, writes Gefter, "was ready to change his mind and did it more than once. But to bring the revision to an end meant repeating what the dying Marx had almost managed to do — to reconsider the grounds. Lenin could not go for such an audit, although he went for it. But above all, he could not do anything else: he did not dare to make the main sacrifice. His new view of the World, of this multi‒faceted subject, with the equality of his hypostases, meant that now the Party had to be sacrificed. He couldn't have done that. <...> Lenin is an involuntary murderer, and for Stalin, murder will become a gigantic life meaning. And he filled our lives with this meaning. Subtly, imperceptibly, seducing us with murder as a meaning. Lenin came closer to what he was initially far from, that it was time to liberate people from the revolution. <...> ... Stalin's important psychological subtext: no, my dears, frolic, but the end result should belong to no one but me alone. Everything must fit into my result, if it doesn't fit, the non—displaced must stop being" ^[3].

Is this approach correct with different attitudes towards the characters in the story? And in general, Gefter's understanding of history is very unusual. History is not an endless historical canvas that has neither beginning nor end in time, but local stories, with a beginning and an end (and what, one wonders, before and after these stories themselves?). History is law-governed (deterministic) and random. She is begotten, and she begets the begetter. People like Lenin and Stalin form history themselves (they become historical "circumstances"). History is not so much historical facts and events as the genesis of history, and, consequently, there may be several stories of the same historical process. History, if it is history, requires reflection, and not at all as an object of historical interest, but as a necessary condition for modernity, correcting historical paths of development.

"From this point of view," writes Gefter, "history appears once. It is a one-time operation. Then you can imagine why it is running out at the present time. After all, what seemed to be the highest for man ‒ the mindset of awareness, forced to dissolve into everyday life ‒ inevitably acquired sinister properties. <…>

The evil places of predestination and the role of cases that start the colossus of history, inflaming determinational lust. This is where all the superpersons of twentieth-century politicians come from. <…>

The historical begins where things that have not been together before are combined! It's a mysterious thing, but if you don't understand it, don't go into history. At the moment when the incompatible becomes combined, a charismatic leader appears. <...> the Central Committee is preparing for the meeting of the 2nd Congress of Soviets ... Lenin appeared at the last moment, and the question of the speaker disappeared: only he has the right to speak about the land, it is clear to everyone. Lenin goes to the podium ‒ He's completely unprepared! Then he just takes out the Socialist‒Revolutionary decree on the land from his pocket, adds a couple of introductory phrases to it, reads it out - and that's it! The game is played. The program of the Bolsheviks was the punishment of the peasant Social Revolutionaries ‒ and in Soviet Russia a peasant tsar appeared." <…>

The man who took someone else's order out of his pocket and announced it to the whole of Russia as a program of Soviet power…Acting indeterministically, a person forms ultra-deterministic realities. Determinism is the brainchild of man. He invents it, shapes it, invents it, and becomes a prisoner of what he has created. <…>

The fact is that Lenin himself is a circumstance. It is a huge, powerful and very persistent circumstance of Russian history. By creating circumstances, he himself has become a circumstance that needs to be explained. Here is Lenin's riddle. <…>

A person is heavily programmed by circumstances, starting from birth, upbringing, and inherited experience ‒ from this point of view, he is almost entirely set! But there is a gap of uncertainty in it. A person does not reconcile himself by trying to widen this gap until he is freed from his assignment — it is impossible, no one has succeeded. But utopians, prophets, revolutionaries, leaders, and charismatics grew up on this soil. <…>

To refute it to the point of complete exclusion from human existence! And if commitment is a burden, then history is liberation, which carries future hardships and forms a secondary, ongoing commitment from history itself. So when we resist the given, we no longer see it in its pure form, but in a mixture where it is difficult to distinguish the varieties and origins of the given. <…>

History is history being made. Because a person not only discovers that he is in the story, he makes it. The fact that history is being made is part of its definition." <…>

When I came to the silent Lenin, I saw the Soviet world as Russian. And now I can answer the question that no one like me can avoid, the question of our involvement. About why we still don't dare to overcome the past, understand it, or even acknowledge it. In the Lenin I saw, in his personality that was so revealed to me, I find the strength and the right to give an answer."^[3]

Gefter paints the following picture of the prerequisites of the Russian revolution. Marx proceeds from a universal and common history for all peoples to the idea of many developments and possible histories, assigning Russia a special place in this space. Lenin repeats his train of thought, coming closer to understanding Russia's actual unpreparedness for a change in economic formation and social system (Alexander Bogdanov wrote about this, by the way). Unable to abandon the original plan, Lenin, on the one hand, assigns the NEP the role of an economic prerequisite, insisting on its temporary nature, on the other ‒ comes up with the idea of managing (correcting) history so that the latter develops in the way necessary for the Bolsheviks. Gefter is convinced that this idea of correcting history has become the source of many negative consequences, including the concept and practice of totalitarianism.

There is clearly a genesis scheme here, which is very interesting, but needs convincing methodology and confirmation by historical facts. The question is, can Gefter's historical research be considered to meet this requirement?

"Previously, for Marx," notes Gefter, "development was one thing, in the singular for the entire human globe, but now developments are possible, in the plural. Then a new problem arises: how will this other development, going its own way and interacting with classical bourgeois development, create its own entrance into communist civilization? Indeed, at intermediate stages between them, serious conflicts of development are possible — in the form of wars and violent clashes. Here, in a vague, original form, there is much of the subsequent that we have experienced in our lifetime. Then there is not only development, but also underdevelopment, pre-development, underdevelopment, lagging, etc. <…>

Lenin has a completely new idea of development. The solution of the agrarian question creates in it the initial prerequisite for the spontaneous natural-historical development of Russia. This spontaneity cannot break through on its own ‒ spontaneity is introduced. Just as capitalism in Russia is primarily introduced by absolutism, so free bourgeois development is introduced from above by revolution, represented by the revolutionary government, which will act as the demiurge of spontaneous development, the creator of natural historical evolution. <…>

This paradoxical innovation contains all future communist catastrophes, including collectivization and Mao's experiments. When the power created by the revolution acts as the "demiurge of spontaneity," this innovation can involuntarily disperse to its poles. One of the poles will be a huge utopia that feeds the impulse of millions of peasant masses, and the other pole will be the hypertrophy of the emerging power within the revolution. Which is turning from a tool designed to give space to development into something else. <…>

There is a manager of development, which almost initially, having lost the property of spontaneity, acquires completely different properties" ^[3].

Methodology for solving the problems posed

This is the case when the use of ready-made methods is not effective, it is necessary to outline a methodology that is suitable for the material and subject under consideration. Such a methodology should answer the following questions: what kind of object are we dealing with, and in what discipline will we consider it? There are two objects: the first, Gefter, who studies the history of Russia and its heroes (Lenin, Stalin, etc.), naturally, I am also interested in this story, and the second object, the author of this article, who analyzes and interprets Gefter's work. In some respects, I also belong to the history workshop, since in many of my studies I have implemented the methodology of the cultural-historical approach, in addition, in 2018 I published the book "A New Concept of History: History as a way of life of an individual, social discourse and Science" ^[7]. As a methodologist of history, and Gefter, in my opinion, is not only a historian, but also a methodologist of history, I am interested in the amazing coincidence of our views, because I did not know Gefter, and I read some of his works only recently.

Now, what scientific discipline should we talk about? First of all, about methodology: both the methodology of history and methodology in general, since Gefter makes psychological and philosophical generalizations in his works. According to M. Bakhtin, history is a humanitarian science, since it deals with texts, their interpretations, reflexive knowledge, the interaction of two actors (the cognizable and the cognizing), and individual phenomena. Other people's consciousnesses, Bakhtin writes, "cannot be contemplated, analyzed, defined as objects, as things ‒ one can only communicate with them dialogically. To think about them is to talk to them, otherwise they immediately turn their object side to us: they fall silent, close up and freeze into complete object images. <…>

If we understand the text broadly," Bakhtin writes, "like any connected sign complex, then art criticism deals with texts. Thoughts about thoughts, experiences of experiences, words about words, texts about texts. This is the main difference between our (humanities) disciplines and the natural sciences (about nature). <…>

The sciences of the spirit. The spirit cannot be given as a thing (a direct object of natural science), but only in symbolic expression, realization in texts.…Each text (as a statement) is something individual, unique and unrepeatable, and this is the whole point of it... it (in its free core) does not allow for either causal explanation or scientific foresight.…The question arises whether science can deal with such absolutely unique individuals... whether they go beyond the scope of generalizing scientific knowledge. Of course it can" ^{[1, p. 116, 281, 283, 285, 287]}.

If we accept these distinctions and statements, then in order to discuss the problems formulated above, we need to reconstruct, firstly, Gefter's understanding of history, and secondly, compare this understanding with the author's concept of history, figuratively speaking, by organizing a "conversation of two spirits" according to Bakhtin.

The author's interpretation of some aspects of Gefter's work

Creativity is a complex process that returns to its beginning several times in order to clarify or rethink it, and again consistently build a discourse. Nevertheless, in my opinion, it contains some mechanism ‒ acts of cognition and problem solving, which drives and determines the unfolding of the creative process. The operation of this mechanism can be summarized in the following structure.

In Gefter's text, it is not difficult to see the main problems that led him to choose the profession of historian and understand history as a way to solve these problems and life itself. In fact, there are three or four of them: a childish fear of Jewish pogroms, an understanding of Soviet history (the civil and patriotic wars that claimed millions, the cult of Stalin and the camps, the dead ends of perestroika and reforms), an attempt to understand the blind faith of the intelligentsia in socialism and the leaders of the revolution, and finally, fear and worries about the possible end of the world during the Cold War era.

"My grandmother,‒ recalls Gefter, "was the first to introduce me to history. Her favorite childhood story was about the Jewish pogroms in Odessa. Every time I asked, her story was repeated, and I already knew what would happen next. I waited with bated breath for the moment when the rioters approached the house ‒ drunken faces, terrible street scenes, screams, convulsive expectation and the climax — the famous Odessa self-defenders come out from two sides of the house! Their name was Aida, the self-defenders. They shoot at the riotous crowd at point-blank range, which disperses. The story first came to me with this story." <…>

The war was short-lived for me due to severe wounds in August 1942. There are few painful memories, here are two touches. The first. The year is 1941, we are leaving the Germans, they are on our heels ‒ a village, a high-standing house. My friend Valya Vaisman and I are leaving the encirclement with a major. I've always remembered the major's phrase. He was a career soldier and he told me: "Do you think it's Hitler coming at us? The thirty-seventh year is upon us!" And I had nothing to answer him. <…>

The Cold War <...> these are two generations of people who grew up within its framework, inhaled its air. This is not a delusion that can be detached from the rest of life., <...> this is a projection of a person as such. This is a human life that breathes blood. <…>

Russia, within its current borders, is a vast expanse that history has never known. However, it is also a superpower with sufficient life-destroying weapons. The Cold War is ending without ending. <…>

Here, the main issue of our planet suddenly emerged. Who promised that man would be able to survive? Who can prove with facts in hand that a person can survive? <…>

We are not the masters of all future, spontaneous and hellish things. We don't know which side the magma will come from, and even if we did, we couldn't stop it. <…>

In the twentieth century, man returns to the relationship with the universe, which was purely not indifferent to his archaic ancestor. He felt like a mortal ancestral being all over again. This feeling introduces his correlation with the universe in relation to the current story. A person is puzzled by the fate of the universe, within which he became a lonely figure (cf. ^[8])... in the 19th century, who cared if the Solar system existed for a thousand or a billion years? Today's man has unknowingly introduced an amendment to death in relation to existence and to his place in the universe" ^[3].

By understanding the logic of history and reconstructing the past, Gefter solves these problems. With Stalin, almost everything is clear to him, the leader's life is known in all his deeds, it is impossible to apply any definitions to him except negative ones: boundless thirst for power, oriental cunning, inhumanity, monstrous and grandiose designs, the permissibility of any means, including murder, millions of innocent victims. Of course, this is also a reconstruction, but it seems that there is every reason for it: the facts, the logic of the revolution, and a suitable personality.

Gefter's attitude to Marx and Lenin is different: here he tries to organize a conversation between two spirits. "How did it happen," asks Gefter, "that an age that seemed to have forever abolished the servile task of human existence drove itself into a trap of collective suicide? I want to understand this. Lenin would not have understood me, but I hope to understand him in this way. I should embark on the path of double reflection by talking about myself, who entered into a relationship with Lenin that evolved on its own. He's the man who took over a piece of my life and settled into it."^[3]

In terms of this conversation, I would note two things. First of all, the Marxist underground is there, and it doesn't matter that Gefter reinterpreted it.: It's a part of you, of your past. Secondly, Gefter, as a historian, comes to the assumption that Marx was looking for a way out, realizing that his concept of a unified world (unitary) history was not correct. "Marx's conclusion is that capitalism has survived its second "XVI century" and has now begun anew. So, capitalism has a resource unknown to communist theory ‒ at the expense of what? Due to the space of the planet... it is very important to Marx that Russia is on the way. But the difficulties of the internal movement of “Capital” are also important, where the subject is declared as unitary and planetary. But the planetary one is not unitary! Does it turn out that communism can be unitary and planetary, or can it be global in a different way? Trapping an object. And with that, Marx leaves."^[3] According to Gefter, it was from this fork in the 1920s that Lenin began, faced with the difficulties of building socialism in Russia.

Lenin was close to realizing that there would be no world revolution at all. The world revolution that he had hoped for by October, around the idea of which the leading core of intellectuals, emigrants and underground workers had gathered, could not take place in the form they had been waiting for.… The world revolution has failed ‒ where is the way out?.. What is it for Russia to push forward alone? The Chaadaev question knocked on Lenin's door. Lenin's reply to him, shortened to a telegram, can be expressed in words ‒ the world revolution in one country. A formula so contradictory that it defies either deployment or implementation. <…>

This man was ready to change his mindset and did it more than once. But to bring the revision to an end meant repeating what the dying Marx had almost managed to do ‒ to reconsider the grounds. Lenin could not go for such an audit, although he went for it. But above all, he could not do anything else: he did not dare to make the main sacrifice. His new view of the World, of this multi‒faceted subject, with the equality of his hypostases, meant that now the Party had to be sacrificed. He couldn't have done that."^[3]

But Stalin could and, having prepared, destroyed the old Party.

Again, I have to agree: this is a reconstruction of history, and there is not much supporting material for it. One can understand Anatoly Chernyaev, who said: "Mikhail Yakovlevich! This is no longer a new interpretation of Marxism ‒ it's yours!" However, for me, this reconstruction is quite convincing, in any case, it explains a lot. From a hypothetical theoretical point of view (in the logic of the genesis of history), it can be assumed that Lenin still did not follow the scenario of abandoning the previous strategy, as well as the idea of his natural path of the Russian revolution, guided by the leader and the party. Even if this assumption is true, we have no facts or serious arguments to believe that such a thing could not have happened. At the same time, Gefter's reconstruction opens up the prospect of resolving the impasse in Russia's development: not revolution, but evolution, not a unitary state, but a well-thought-out and secured federation with a new social order and law.

"A new state," writes Gefter, "can only be built in a strategic retreat. It must politically retreat to strictly limited, well-known limits. By cutting back on a number of functions, through the sovereignization or republicanization of Russia, as you like. A strong state power is still possible, but it is no longer “Moscow, the Kremlin.” Without the resources to take everything away from everyone and then distribute it herself, she will have to enter into a political game with the lands and agree on new rules. <…>

Now we are talking about more. The fact that the main burden of taking care of current affairs lies on the territories themselves. And the process of the sovereignty of these lands, according to the history, scale, and nature of the population, is growing into entire countries ‒ Russian countries! ‒ this process is unavoidable. There is only a twofold solution to it. Either the force of the ban, and then there will be great blood, or the real reform is a federal union brought to a constitutional foundation. It also includes Russian countries, no matter what their names are: lands, territories, republics, and so on. As the head of state, but not the head of the executive branch, the president should become the leader of the union of countries forming Russia. The guardian of the new Federation" ^[3].

However, the question is, would it have been possible to build a real federation, given the picture that Gefter painted: the tradition of authoritative power of the Russian tsars, the utopian consciousness of raznochintsy and revolutionaries, the centuries-old habit of the Russian population to unquestion and submission, the wrong consciousness, starting from the upper floors of power? Unlikely. And one more consideration. At the end of the work, Gefter assumes that the Aeon change is beginning: "The mining man used the resources of the Earth, set by planetary and cosmogonic evolution. From a doomed man, he became a being who uses everything on Earth. Now his main resource will be the resources contained in the person himself. He moves into this mode forcibly, retreating from an era of history where the destruction of his species and higher forms of life on Earth was outlined... the danger of the end of the Homo species has increased due to its leveling by higher, “smart” technologies of progress. That is, the species Homo sapiens will have to somehow save itself from the success of its own activities, to look for a new foundation and foundation for the diverse dynamics of human… It means that something will happen to the person again. Maybe not for the last time, but maybe this time Homo sapiens won't be able to slip out."^[3]. It is difficult to say what will happen to Russia with such a change, whether this process will not redraw all previous goals and objectives.

Historical self-determination of the author

Two tasks are indicated above: Gefter's understanding of history and comparing this understanding with the author's concept of history. To begin with, for me, the Jewish pogroms, the history of Russia, and the fear of the end of the world were pressing issues. This is evidenced by my dreams. I remember, even before serving in the army, I had a dream that I was hiding from rioters who still found me; the main experience was fear. I served in Germany during the escalation of the Cold War. The commanders were setting us up for a nuclear war, saying that in a week we would have to reach the English Channel in tanks, and we would go through Germany, which was destroyed by atomic bombing. I was so tired that I didn't dream about anything during this period. But after the army, I began to persistently have a dream with the same plot. I'm running home to my parents. There are ruins around left after the atomic explosion. They are white and glow from radiation. There's fear hanging around. The dream passed after three years. Of course, it was a psychological trauma ^[9]. I think Gefter has it too.

Svetlana Neretina, objecting to K. Popper, who argued that "there can be no historical laws," and therefore, like many historians who considered history as an "interpretation of events," writes that "history itself is this universal law of the world brought to consciousness," that such a law is "we ourselves as historical creatures" ^{[6, p. 433]}. I would agree with the amendments. The interpretation of historical events is obtained as a result of the reconstruction of history ("man,‒ writes Gefter, "is a being who invents the past" ^[3]). From here, a branch of knowledge has grown, where this creative game takes the form of a reconstruction of the past. In turn, the reconstruction of history is conditioned by the "historical way of life of the individual" and the peculiarity of awareness of the past, which are characteristic of everyone. The need to recognize the past is important for a proper understanding of oneself, others, and the world. A true story is always a story that has a beginning and an end and is clear in terms of events. Isn't that what Neretina is writing about, claiming that a myth is a tale of life as it happens in general, a story is a tale of how it happens in a specific period of time, arises and dies? ^{[6, pp. 20-21, 441]}.

When I talk about the "historical way of life of a person," I mean three things. Firstly, the historical way of life involves living not only with your contemporaries, but also with long-gone people. Of course, not with everyone, but with those who matter to us. When I say live, I mean: I try to understand their actions, include them in my circle (people, my ancestors), draw strength from them, or, conversely, defend myself, provide them with a voice, ask questions, etc., that is, everything that is included in the humanitarian understanding of life as communication and the unity of being together. Secondly, the historical way of life presupposes the belief that people's past lives somehow determine my present life. Research shows that there are many variants of historical determination: the social tradition that continues in me, the disidentification from it, the denial of the past, the rethinking of a past life, its assimilation, the renewal of the past, etc. Thirdly, both of the points indicated here are realized based on correct reconstructions of history, i.e. those that satisfy the requirement of "identity and non-identity of the past and present" ^[10].

When I wrote my concept of history, I hadn't read Gefter yet. After reading it, I was amazed, as if I had studied with him and was solving the tasks set by Gefter. It was not Gefter who set me historical tasks, but my teacher, Georgy Shchedrovitsky, who understood history in a completely different way. After going through the universities of the Moscow Methodological Circle, and having disagreed with my teacher, I radically revised his Marxist views on history. Let's take just one topic that Gefter also discusses: the beginnings and endings of different stories unfolding in the bosom of historical time. How can you think of such a thing, and why is it not just one story? I will not give general arguments, but will consider one case ‒ the life of the Swedish scientist, and then the Christian esotericist of the first half of the XVIII century, Emanuel Swedenborg. First the facts.

Swedenborg grew up in the family of Jesper Swedberg, bishop and regimental priest of the Royal Guard. Naturally, he received a good religious upbringing, and then a natural science education. He graduated from Uppsala University and became a renowned scientist and engineer (at the age of fifty-five, Swedenborg published twenty-five volumes of research on mineralogy, anatomy and geometry). He was a consistent Christian, as evidenced by the entries on many pages of his writings.

"1. Read the Word of God often and reflect on it.

2. Subjugate oneself in everything to the will of God's providence.

3. Observe true decency in all actions and always keep an impeccable conscience.

4. To fulfill honestly and truthfully the duties of one's rank and duty of service, and to try to make oneself a useful member of society in all respects" ^{[11, p. 4]}.

Suddenly, Swedenborg leaves science and changes his lifestyle. "This event," writes Jorge Luis Borges, ‒was a revelation. It descended on Swedenborg in London; as noted in his diary, the revelation was preceded by dreams... In London, a stranger followed him down the street and, entering his house, called himself Jesus Christ. He said that the Church was in decline, like the Jewish church before the coming of Christ, and that Swedenborg should renovate it by creating a third church, the Church of Jerusalem.…He said that Swedenborg would be allowed to visit the other world, the spirit world with countless heavens and hells. He said that Swedenborg should study the Sacred The Scriptures. And before writing anything, Swedenborg devoted two years to studying the Hebrew language, because he wanted to read the Sacred Texts in the original. He began to study them again and saw in them the basis for his teaching. This is a bit like the Kabbalists, who base their searches on Sacred texts..." ^{[2, pp. 521-522]}.

"The mysteries revealed in the following pages," writes Swedenborg himself, "relate to heaven and hell and to man's life after his death. Nowadays, a man of the church hardly knows anything about heaven and hell and about his life after death, although all this is written in the Word. Even many who belong to the church deny all this, saying to themselves: who came and told you? But this tendency to denial, which is mainly characteristic of the learned of this world, did not infect or spoil the simple of heart and simple faith. For 13 years I was given to be with the angels, talk to them as one person to another and see what is happening in heaven and hell. At the present time, I have been given the opportunity to describe what I have seen and heard in the hope that ignorance will be enlightened and unbelief destroyed. Such a direct revelation is taking place today because it is the very one that is understood by the coming of the Lord" ^{[11, p. 14]}.

Ferelius, a friend of Swedenborg, asked a year before his death if Swedenborg "intended to recant, perhaps, something from what he had written before his death in order to discover the truth. To this Swedenborg, rising from the bed and putting his hand on his chest, replied with some fervor, testifying to the truth of everything he had written and adding that he could have written much more if he had been allowed to." Confessing before his death, Swedenborg said: "Everything I have written is the pure truth… you will subsequently become more and more convinced of this every day" ^{[11, pp. 13-14]}.

Now my interpretation. The first story of Swedenborg is an ordinary one, starting from childhood until his death, it is the life of a deeply believing Christian. The second story is already unusual, Swedenborg esoterica. He turned to esotericism, resolving the contradictions of two worldviews ‒ spiritual, Christian and scientific. For example, in his teaching, God is not a Trinity, but a single Being (obviously, from the point of view of science, the hypostases of the Creator were perceived by Swedenborg as a contradiction). In Swedenborg's teaching, every person is an immortal spirit. In this respect, there is no death, but there is a spiritual transformation. This resolved the impossibility for a scientist to conceive of resurrection from the dead. Over time, Swedenborg came to the esoteric idea of two worlds, the authentic, spiritual and the secondary, natural.

"In a word," writes Swedenborg, "everything that exists in nature, from the smallest object to the largest, is a correspondence; because the natural world, with all its accessories, borrows its being and existence from the spiritual world, and both from the Divine.…After that, anyone who thinks at least somewhat rationally will say that all these miracles are not from the spiritual world, to which the natural world serves as a corporeal shell or in order to present the spiritual cause in a material manifestation" ^{[11, pp. 54-55]}.

The third story is mystical. It begins with Svebenborg visiting heaven and hell, communicating with angels, and all this is a reality for Svebenborg that cannot be doubted. "Now," writes Swedenborg, "let us turn to experience. That angels have a human form, that is, that they are the same kind of people, I have seen this up to a thousand times: I have talked to them as man to man, sometimes with one, sometimes with many together, and I have never seen their external image differ in any way from human; sometimes I was amazed at this but so that this would not be attributed to deception of the senses or imagination, I was given to see them in reality, with full consciousness of feelings and in a state of clear comprehension" ^{[11, p. 42]}.

In relation to these statements, of course, one can take the position formulated by I. Kant, they say, Swedenborg is a fantasist and abnormal. "Therefore," writes Kant, "I will not condemn the reader in the least if, instead of considering visionaries as half belonging to another world, he immediately writes them down as candidates for hospital treatment and thus saves himself from any further research...in Swedenborg's work I find the most bizarre play of imagination, which Many other lovers found it in the play of nature when they painted the holy family in the outlines of spotted marble or monks, baptismal fonts and church organs in stalactite formations.…I am tired of quoting the wild ravings of the worst of all science fiction writers or continuing them until they describe the state after death... it would be in vain to try to hide the fruitlessness of all this work – it catches everyone's eye" ^{[5, pp. 327, 340, 347]}.

However, in my opinion, in this case it does not matter whether the Swedenborgian world exists or not. Human life takes place not so much in the natural environment as in semiotics and imagination. It's not for nothing that we are currently so concerned about digitalization and artificial intelligence.

So, there are three stories: canonical Christian, esoteric, also Christian, but not canonical, and mystical, and, indeed, in the same historical time of the New European culture. It's clear to me what Gefter is writing about: yes, separate stories with beginnings (becoming) and endings (ending).

Conclusion

In this article, I have touched upon only a few problems of the methodology of history raised by Gefter. The rest are next in line. I would like to end with his following statements.

"History is an attempt to build a human life that cannot consist of consciousness and thinking alone.…History is an attempt to draw the whole of life into the act of becoming aware of it and telling it. <…>

From this point of view, the story appears once. It is a one-time operation. Then you can imagine why it is running out at the present time. After all, what seemed to be the highest for man ‒ the mindset of awareness, forced to dissolve into everyday life ‒ inevitably acquired sinister properties. <…>

Svetlana Neretina is partly right when she calls my views historical eschatology, there really is something in this. But how could I not push away my idea of not the end, but the exhaustion of the story?"^[3]

"They will ask: why is this appeal to the past? I answer: in the name of preserving the humanized Earth and myself as a Human Being. Preservation, through change, development, in which the main azimuth is not unity on a single, even the most ideal basis, but unity stemming from differences, from a dialogue of differences, from mutual contesting them, as well as mutual interest in them being, being "forever" and living their lives" ^[4].