TRAC
Interview Transcript

Sergei Kapitsa   (cont)

Mr.  K:  Well, you see, the major point during all these transformations is a change of generations.  This, I think, is a crucial thing--changing generations.  All--in the first place--all great upheavals like this lead to a lost generation.  Take the great Russian literature of the second half of the Nineteenth Century: Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky.  One of the major things was the lost revolution, a lost generation that appeared after the huge changes in the Russian society after the abolition of serfdom and the economic and political reforms in the middle of the Nineteenth Century.  You see, they described the lost generation in a certain sense--the landed gentry that was lost.  The same half of the term appeared in fact in Europe--Hemingway, Dos Passos, people like that who wrote about the lost generation of the First World War.  They were fighting for great ideals, and when they came back home, what did they find?  You see, it's -- that's the tragedy of all these great upheavals.

Interviewer:  And now we have that again.

Mr.  K:  And now we're having that again, you see.  And I think you can say many things about Yeltsin, especially in his last transition inviting these young boys as they're called by the senior generation that thinks it's their time to play the games.  They are the hope of the country.  They are the money movers.  They are the people who really have new ideas and aren't tied to the past.  They're well trained, thanks to a fine education system that we have in this part of the world, and that is the hope of the country.  But there is a very large lost generation.  The miners and most of the intellectuals, and all that.  The military--what do you do with them?  We'll wait till we simply fade out.

Interviewer:  Another source of hope, would you say, is that, to the extent to which Russia in fact is tied in to the global game, more so than say a lot of other parts of the world that are not so tied in.  And this has developed for a long, long time in Russia, scientifically, in terms of media and so forth.

Mr.  K:  Well, that is certainly the case, you see.  Opening up is very important.  But again, you'll find that the younger generation, beginning with even my grandchildren or so, they all speak English, they're open to the world, they've already traveled.  Traveling in the past was a privilege of a very select group and had no real influence on what was happening.  I was lucky to be one of them.  But now it's sort of standard.

Interviewer:  Are you worried about a strong man that could lead to an authoritarian setback, that it could go that way?

Mr.  K:  I don't think it can really go, because there's been such a devolution of power to the regions, and that is one of the most important points.  In fact, I think anyone who comes to power, his main duty to the country will be to sort of keep the realm more or less intact.

Interviewer:  How do you assess, then, the hopes of the provinces?  Moscow is...

Mr.  K:  Moscow is a singular place.  It's one of the most expensive cities in the world now.  As you see, it has all the outward signals of flourishing, but again it has huge contrasts.  I remember once I was bringing a rather posh car, a rather important lady to our place in Moscow, and we parked next to the garbage heap, where two women were rummaging to find something that they could eat.  On the other end of the garden, there was a very good looking lady having two fine pedigree dogs that I expect were fed much better than those poor ladies.  So that's what's happening.  That's not propaganda, you see, the effects of life.  And this is perhaps the social cost of what's happening.

 I haven't traveled much during these last years through my own country.  I more often go east or west and various spots there.  Well, one spot's in Georgia.  There things were desperate.  In Leningrad and Petersburg, things of course are much worse than in Moscow.  But still things are carrying on, you see.  Gradually I think this devolution of power works.  And they'll have to look after themselves much more than being looked after by the central state.