Perestroika and the nineties in Vladimir Bibikhin’s hermeneutics

Abstract

The paper provides a reconstruction and a critical analysis of Vladimir Bibikhin’s philosophical hermeneutics of Perestroika and the collapse of the USSR as well as political and economic environment in Russia during the “wild nineties”. It is argued that the reasons why Bibikhin addressed this issue cannot be fully reduced either to the Russian philosophical tradition, or to Heidegger’s notion of the historical factuality of philosophical thinking. Both these intellectual strategies equally influenced Bibikhin’s approach towards current political events. Furthermore, various researchers provide opposite interpretations of Bibikhin’s reaction to the pressing issues of his time. While Artemy Magun argues that Bibikhin fully shared the political enthusiasm of Perestroika, Mikhail Bogatov discovers Bibikhin’s criticism of this enthusiasm. Dealing with a wider range of Bibikhin’s texts, one can find a single cause behind the variety of interpretations. This cause is Bibikhin’s own complex attitude to the matter. On the one hand, Bibikhin not only criticized the hype of Privatization, which emerged in the nineties, but also was skeptical about the change of the ideology. On the other hand, Bibikhin acknowledged the significance of the current events and urged intellectuals to think about them. Bibikhin believed philosophical work to be the only adequate answer to the unfolding freedom. Therefore, he emphasized the relevance of the Russian philosophical tradition to this task. This is why Bibikhin considered Perestroika and the “wild nineties” to be a new chance to establish Russian philosophy. However, his main goal was to find a non-ideological way of thinking.