Documents / FOIA release
This Central Intelligence Agency JPRS report, dated 1 May 1989, is an English translation of an essay by academician Boris Raushenbakh from the Moscow journal Kommunist. The essay argues that people need both rational scientific knowledge and metaphorical, emotional knowledge, and that these connect to morality and religious feeling. It also criticizes crude atheist propaganda and calls for restoring moral principles. The only mention of UFOs is a passing remark that some people turn to belief in flying saucers.
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## Document 3 of 3 principles in our life by humanizing it, by turning to the priceless monuments of domestic and global culture which, in the most people, in the course of their daily concerns, have somehow been pushed into the periphery of the mind and no longer participate in shaping human behavior. Familiarity with the history of the fatherland and its heroic pages and the activities of outstanding compatriots (public figures, artists, military leaders) to whom lofty (and by no means advantageous) objectives determined the meaning of their lives would all, unquestionably, contribute to restructuring the mind in the desired aspect. 32. It would be difficult to overestimate the role of the monuments of history and culture which materialize the past of the fatherland and which make it possible to feel the link of time and to feel that one is a link in the chain going deep into the centuries and to be imbued with pride in the past and awareness of the need to pursue the great cause bequeathed to us by previous generations. It may be useful to note here that "'living"' monuments yield much more than the "'dead"' ones. Touring the new building of Leningrad University is entirely different from walking along its old lengthy hall, the walls of which remember Mendeleyev. Naturally, erecting new university buildings is necessary. It is important, however, for the old building to remain "'alive,'" i.e., to remain part of the university and not become one more set of offices. 33. Russian literature, in which problems of morality have always played a key role, could give us no less and, possibly, even more. Suffice it to recall such guiding lights as F.M. Dostoyevskiy, and L.N. Tolstoy and their search for moral ideals. 34. All of this was justifiably and frequently said and written by many of our contemporaries concerned with the gradual decline in spirituality and the strengthening of narrow-minded and short-sighted practicalism in all areas of life. Humanizing could be likened to a beneficial rain which allows the flowers of spirituality to bloom. I chose this pompous comparison to emphasize the problem. The thorough watering of the rows is, in itself, no guarantee of a good crop. If nothing has been planted nothing will grow. Water is merely one of the components which agriculture needs. This is precisely the case of a humanitarian education and the reading of the literary classics. Had this been sufficient, our writers would have been people of ideal morality. Unfortunately, the history of Soviet literature firmly refutes such an assumption and, consequently, all that we mentioned above is, naturally, a prerequisite which is necessary in order to assert the moral principles in the life of man and society but is by no means sufficient. 35. In order for humanizing to justify the hopes placed on it a
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FOIA release, from the cia-readingroom collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 13 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.