LaRouche to Russian Academy,
Youth: Give Humanity A Future
by Rachel DouglasU.S. Democratic Presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche, famous in Russia as economist, strategist, philosopher and—in the words of one recent press release written by his Moscow friends—"the conscience of America," was the lead-off speaker at the "Science and Our Future: Ideas To Change the World" conference, which took place April 14-16 in Moscow. The three-day event, held at the Vernadsky State Geological Museum (SGM) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, was co-sponsored by the SGM and the Schiller Institute, as well as several companies.
LaRouche and his wife, Schiller Institute founder Helga Zepp-LaRouche, arrived on their Moscow visit at a moment of high interest in LaRouche's evaluations, ideas, and proposals, on the part of Russian scientists and political analysts. This month marks ten years since LaRouche's first in-person trip to Russia, as the guest of the late Pobisk G. Kuznetsov. During that time, his stature in Russia has grown at an increasing rate, as LaRouche's economic forecasts are borne out and his statesmanship is in ever greater demand, as against the spread of war under the domination of U.S. policy by Dick Cheney's synarchist clique.
More than 70 scientists, students, and members of the press were welcomed to the conference by the director of the SGM. As announced in pre-conference printed materials, the organizing committee had received 115 papers from 177 scientists, ranging in age from 13-85 years. The emphasis was on non-standard approaches and novel ideas, which were discussed and underwent competitive evaluation during the conference. An article ahead of the event appeared in the Nauka (Science) supplement to Izvestia newspaper and Itar-TASS put out a wire—both of them mentioning the participation of LaRouche and his colleague Jonathan Tennenbaum.
In his presentation, titled "Entering the Economy of the Noösphere," LaRouche took up a central theme of his discussions with members of the Russian intelligentsia over the past decade and a half: Russia's mission as "Eurasia's Keystone Economy," in making Mankind's way out of a looming dark age. It is concretized in the project for Eurasian Land-Bridge with corridors of dense physical economic development. The identity of Russia that suits it for such a historic mission is defined not merely by geography, but by a national tradition of scientific genius, best exemplified by the chemist and economist Dmitri Mendeleyev in the 19th Century and the Ukrainian and Russian biogeochemist Vladimir Vernadsky in the 20th. It is in Vernadsky's Noösphere, the realm of human creative mental action, that the potential to develop new types of resources, and eventually manage the Solar System, is found.
LaRouche's most recent book is titled The Economics of the Noösphere.
By way of contrast to the unlimited power of human scientific work and economic development, LaRouche counterposed the danger of a "fish-bowl" mentality, which traps people in their axiomatic assumptions, and so dooms them. That was a timely polemic to be delivered in Moscow, just a few days after President Vladimir Putin had warmly received in the Kremlin a group of purveyors of the planet's currently worst set of failed axioms: economists from the neo-liberal school of Friedrich von Hayek's Mont Pelerin Society. These are the apostles of free trade, globalization, brutal selfishness, and greed.
After LaRouche's keynote, the Vernadsky Museum conference heard from a representative of the European Union, who discussed the importance of programs to support young scientists, including in Russia. Academician Dmitri V. Rundkvist, the senior scientist at the SGM, spoke about fostering new ideas and intellectual creativity, and the need to study "the laws of development of the Biosphere and the Noösphere," the realm of the infinite mental resources of Man.
LaRouche also visited the Moscow Academy of Finance and Law, April 15, where he addressed an audience on the post-1971 phases of collapse, in the interrelated spheres of global finance and the physical economy, and the New Bretton Woods alternative. On April 14, he was the guest of the "Student Evenings" program at the prestigious Moscow State University (MGU).
The LaRouche Youth Movement
At MGU and at the Vernadsky Museum conference, LaRouche reported to his Russian audiences about the emergence of the LaRouche Youth Movement around the world, and discussed the importance of this next generation of leaders—in order that Mankind have a next generation, at all. In a hall in the main MGU building, LaRouche held a two-and-a-half-hour dialogue with close to 100 students—a full house, which included students from other universities.
The MGU event had been advertised on the youth web site www.almater.ru, with an excellent biographical sketch of LaRouche and his political and scientific work. The announcement concluded: "LaRouche's activity and the civic positions he takes, which incur extreme hostility from the world oligarchy, are of extraordinary importance in world politics. Reminding Americans and the world about the principles on which U.S. policy was originally founded, in particular under George Washington, Abraham Lincoln and, later, Franklin Roosevelt, Lyndon LaRouche personifies the conscience of America. Giving due to the genius of Russian scientists, LaRouche speaks about Russia's mission with breathtaking historical optimism, which our own compatriots so lack. His evaluations, forecasts, and initiatives are of unique value both for scientists and for the public, for people who are engaged in thinking about the prospects for world history and Russia's strategic role in the resolution of the contradictions in the world, which have reached a critical level in our time and require resolution without delay."
Introducing LaRouche in person was Professor Andrei Kobyakov, who teaches economics at MGU, as well as being a published writer on the financial bubble process in the world economy, an editor of Russky Predprinimatel (Russian Entrepreneur) magazine, and author of a recent, devastating critique of the neo-cons in the U.S. government. Kobyakov's latest book, co-authored with Mikhail Khazin, is The Sunset of the Dollar Empire and the End of Pax Americana. Kobyakov and Khazin describe LaRouche as "probably the only American expert who has forecast, over a long period of time, the inevitable collapse of the now-reigning liberal monetary and financial system."
Kobyakov said that LaRouche's first visit to the exclusive premises of MGU was an historic event, bringing to the University a unique historical person of our time, a universal thinker like Leonardo da Vinci.
In the context of a presentation on the economic development of Eurasia, LaRouche further developed Russia's potential multi-level role. The Asian population centers need the creation of modern transportation corridors and are hungry for raw materials. Russia and Kazakstan have great raw materials reserves in thinly populated, underdeveloped areas. In the Soviet period, there was a perspective for the development of the Asian part of Russia, which needs to be renewed. At another level, though, mineral resources are finite. The question arises, of how to create new resources. Mankind could develop means for the transmutation of elements and the creation of synthetic materials. Here, Russia's unique role is rooted in the tradition of Peter the Great, Leibniz and the Russian Academy of Sciences, Mendeleyev, and Vernadsky ("my hero, for Russia," LaRouche said).
LaRouche told the Moscow students that around the world, youth are posing the question to their parents' generation: What world have you left to us? Like fledglings who have been booted out of the nest, university-age young people are looking at the world they've come into, and what they see is the basis for an acute conflict between the generations.
LaRouche concluded with a personal discussion of immortality and the importance of dedication to a mission in life. He challenged the Russian youth to be optimistic and to find the meaning of life in doing something good.
The Russian students asked LaRouche several questions about religious and cultural conflicts among nations, which he answered with the example of how he, as President of the United States, would deal with religion by centering on the fundamental difference between Man and Beast, as an ecumenical issue. Asked about the war in Iraq, and U.S. policy, LaRouche gave the background of synarchism. "These are my enemies," he said. The synarchists brought the Nazis to power; then, after World War II, Nazi elements were incorporated into Anglo-American intelligence. That is where Cheney comes from, and LaRouche is leading the fight to get them out.
The "Science and Our Future" conference concluded on April 16 with a round table discussion among the leading participants. Here, LaRouche propounded the concept of education that is the central principle of the LaRouche Youth Movement. It is a principle of truthfulness, he said, which discerns the difference between knowledge and mere opinion. Youth who come to LaRouche, looking for the real education they have not found in the universities, master Karl Friedrich Gauss' 1799 work on the Fundamental Theorem of Algebra, which mastery can serve them as a criterion of truthfulness in their study of history and engagement in current history.
Igniting a wave of excitement among youth about scientific discovery, LaRouche said, can revitalize an entire society. "You recall this quality of excitement," he told the senior Russian scientists who were present; it is what can revive science and give a mission to the generation now 18-25 years of age, who are key to humanity's future.
At the Vernadsky Museum conference, as elsewhere, LaRouche's remarks were warmly received.
