I came across the visual artist and writer Nikita Petrov some years ago via the awesome YouTube-channels MeaningofLife.tv and Bloggingheads.tv, where he has had insightful and enlightening conversations with people like John Horgan, Glenn Loury, and Robert Wright. He also runs a substack called Psychopolitica, which features his articles and art. Us being from neighboring countries in these turbulent times, I had a pleasure to ask Nikita a few questions about life and its philosophies here in these regions between the east and the west.
Privjet Nikita! How are you feeling on this day in February of 2022?
I’m doing ok. My girlfriend Karina got Omicron a few days ago, but her symptoms are mild. After a long pause, I’m working on a new issue of Psychopolitica, which will focus on AI and Cyberspace news from China, and we have just published a couple of math puzzles at The Glenn Show—I’m excited about both of these things.
During the pandemic, you have decided to move out to the Russian countryside. Is this where you are still, and how is it compared to a bigger city like Moscow or St. Petersburg?
I just returned to St. Petersburg and am going to spend the next couple of months here. The hope is that time will be enough to figure out the plan going forward.
Karina, our dog Leo, and I spent about 1.5 years in what you call “countryside.” We were renting a little house with a wood-burning stove, a bania (Russian sauna), and leaky pipes, in a settlement—the technical term is “a non-commercial gardening community”—some 40 min away from St. Petersburg. It’s mostly inhabited by people much wealthier than us. One of the streets is called “the Cheka street” (Cheka being was the first of the USSR’s secret police agencies). Every house is surrounded by a high metal fence. Many of the inhabitants refuse to say hello when passing you by, even if you say hello to them.
I think we stayed there a half-year too long—the house was falling apart in a fairly literal sense, it got cold in the winter, we’ve lost water multiple times, and all of that, coupled with isolation, started to get tiresome.
But at first, it was a very positive change from the city, which felt suffocating because of the pandemic. I loved being in nature, being able to use the sauna whenever I wanted, and even having to chop wood for heating. It was very grounding.
If we still touch briefly on the subject of the plague of our times, I personally noticed some Russian comrades of mine downplaying the seriousness of the pandemic big time still a year ago, but what do you think the general population of for example Moscow thinks of the casualties of the virus at the moment, and the way the authorities have handled the crisis?
I wonder what you mean by downplaying. Russians do tend to be a bit fatalistic.
Now that we’re two years into it, Covid is a lived experience. I got it early (and had a miserable time of it), my girlfriend is going through it right now, most of our friends and family members have health with it at some point. I even know a couple of people that died. On the economic side, everybody sees prices going up. Its political and psychological consequences are also hard to miss, and they’re not positive.
So it’s not that we don’t know things are bad. We know they are, we just seem to be bad at doing anything about it. Most people accept the situation with a “whatcha gonna do” kind of attitude.
How would you describe your childhood growing up in Russia, compared to Europe for example. After the rest of the world was "exposed" to us all after the emergence of the internet, did you feel the kids of your age were perhaps missing out on something?
I was born in 1988, which is three years before the collapse of the Soviet Union.
The 1990s were a rough period—a lot of poverty, crime, drugs, humiliation, confusion, government incompetence, and so forth—but I think the main way this manifested for my generation is that we haven’t had many happy, inspired, successful adults in our lives. Our parents and teachers were often tired, distracted, cynical or depressed, barely making ends meet—and many of us have internalised this as a low expectation for life generally. There’s no expectation of life being a happy experience.
Now, as grown-ups, we have to exert some effort to break out of that habitual suffering, to inspire ourselves, and to see life as an opportunity instead of a chore.
I first came across you from the chats you've had with the wonderful people of meaningoflife.tv and bloggingheads.tv, where you have done some work as a visual artist as well. How did you end up with those gigs?
I took Robert Wright’s course Buddhism and Modern Psychology on Coursera in 2014. The next year, when I was about to quit an office job in Houston, he posted a job ad on Twitter, looking for an assistant to work with him in New York. I responded.
My CV had a lot of relevant working experience, but at the end, I also included a link to a video of me drinking and painting the alcohol being consumed on the surface of the table I’m drinking at. I didn’t get the job, but the video caught Bob’s attention, and he asked me to create some visual aids for a series of lectures he was planning to give.
This started our collaboration, which eventually became my full-time job as a “creative director” at Bob’s Nonzero Foundation, which produces all shows on meaningoflife.tv and bloggingheads.tv, as well as Bob’s own Nonzero Newsletter.
I have just left this position on Jan, 1. I now hold the same title at The Glenn Show, which started as a blogginheads.tv-project and now has grown past it.
The people featured on those particular YouTube-channels have long and impressive backgrounds in academia (something I certainly do not). How has you own (possible) academic life and working life been so far?
I have zero background in academia. I do hold a masters degree in designing integrated circuits or some such, but I was a terrible student, so this degree doesn’t really mean anything.
But I am curious and thoughtful and pay attention when talking to people, so I get a kind of a second-hand, surface-level education from having conversations with people whose backgrounds are more impressive than mine.
There was a time when I would get surprised when (especially well known) people "admitted" online they had done psychedelics, but these days it's quite normal to see the biggest voices in for example science exchange experiences of tripping. Do you think the normalization of the psychedelic experience as something completely positive, or is there a downside to it, such as sometimes in the case of legalizing of certain substances?
I think the West (Russia, not so much) is looking for ways to integrate psychedelics into the broader culture. I see that as an important, exciting, and challenging project, and I feel a certain responsibility over it myself.
There is a culture emerging around these substances, but we do not yet know what this culture is going to look like in the fullness of time. It can be healthy, inspiring, and conducive to human development, but it could also be trivial, manipulative, tasteless and commercialised. Anybody who is associated with psychedelics contribute to it going one way or another. I’m trying to play my part as best as I can.
When it comes to psychedelics, you have a lot of experience with different ones, meaning different altered states and perspectives regarding the human conscious experience in general. While I currently tend to regard the psychedelic (and also certain meditative) experiences as indeed a shift in the perspectives, and something mostly neurological, what would you say are the biggest lessons your personal psychonautical journeys have taught you?
I could come up with some formulations… “Paying attention is key.” “Everything is connected.” “Everything in the consciousness correlates to everything in the body.” “The self is not what it seems to be.” Or, McKenna’s favourite quote from J. B. S. Haldane (I am paraphrasing): “The world isn’t just stranger than we suppose; it’s stranger than we can suppose.”
But I don’t know if there is much value in such pronouncements. Ultimately, they are just words, and the main thing I get out of my trips is a kind of an experiential knowledge, closer to a skill—something like riding a bike or swimming. Riding the bike of my mind, or swimming in the ocean of consciousness.
These skills are hard to formulate in any meaningful way, but they have to do with perception, attention, will, patience, calm, humility, honesty, letting go, the body, relationships, communication.
After people get their consciousness altered and perspectives shifted, their life’s philosophies tend to change as well, although in some cases the experience may naturally strengthen pre-existing views. How do you personally like to see existence in the universe and on a human level right now? Do you like the idea of the "God of Spinoza", as giving meaning, or would you consider yourself a bit more nihilistic in that sense?
I don’t have a grand theory of what reality is, but I feel like I’m playing a part in it, and I feel like I can play it better or worse. When I play it well—when pay attention the right way—there seems to be more meaning, joy, beauty, humor, a sense of connection between people and things.
I suppose “God” may be defined as what happens when all the attention is paid the right way and everything gets connected and fills with meaning, joy, and so forth; and some might argue that this is already the case, but our “sinful nature” (if you are Christian) or “ignorance” (if you are Hindu or Buddhist) blind us to this fact.
Again, I am skeptical about our ability to describe the nature of “God” or “reality”—they do seem to be “stranger than we can suppose.” I am more interested in learning to navigate these places.
Maybe God is something we do, something we participate in.
While writing this, the speculations about the possible actions of NATO and Putin regarding Ukraine are going hot, and recently some high ranking Russian retired military officers voiced their concerns about the whole situation. How common is this these days, to stand up against the man?
I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t seen those comments by retired officers.
Standing up to the man is not at all common. Russia is in a period of deep reaction, with many dissenters in prison or emigration. The oppositional movement, which was very alive 10 years ago, is now not a movement at all. It’s hard to say how long this is going to last, but I see no signs of the situation changing in the near-term.
While some western leaders have voiced concerns of an "imminent" attack, I've gotten the impression the common Russian citizen considers the moving of troops at the Ukrainian border to be just a routine military exercise. How is the consensus of the people and the press over there at the moment in your opinion?
Most people I see and hear from are confused by the whole thing. When Western media first started reporting on the hypothetical Russian invasion, it seemed bizarre. It still does, but the higher the tensions, the less implausible some kind of a hot conflict becomes.
As I’m typing this, the news headlines say things like “The CIA says Russia might attack Ukraine the day after tomorrow.” No particular reason for this date is given. Ukraine’s President says, “Please stop saying the war is about to start.” Russia says, “We’re not attacking anybody.”
I think a war would be disastrous for Russia, and I don’t see why Putin would think otherwise. A full-fledged attack also doesn’t fit his MO. He likes to do quick interventions with specific outcomes, when the opportunity presents itself. Georgia attacked South Ossetia in 2008, and Putin moved in, turning Ossetia into a pro-Russian buffer zone. Ukraine was going through a coup/revolution in 2014, and Putin bit off Crimea. Kazakhstan was dealing with a major uprising a month ago, and Putin sent in some troops to help the authorities regain control—now they “owe him one.”
So to me, this looks like a political game. Putin moves troops around to put the West on edge and see if he can get something out of it in negotiations. Or maybe he’s just happy with the damage the talk about the war is causing to Ukraine’s economy. Meanwhile, Biden’s administration is being “tough on Russia,” which can be good for the polls at home. First you say Russia is attacking next week, then, when Russia doesn’t attack, you say this is because of you.
That’s my, admittedly uninformed, analysis. The problem is: 1) I can be wrong, and 2) even if I am right, the risk of the situation spiraling out of control seems to be getting higher by the day.
Still, the idea of “Russian tanks in Kyiv” continues to sound bizarre to me. I see only major drawbacks and risks in it for Putin, both internationally and at home.
While there has been massive protesting and uprising (to certain degree) in countries like Russia and Belarus during the last few years, we often get the feeling nothing seems to shake the status of certain leaders and their cronies who enjoy power too much. What do you think has to change in order to topple the kings, or do you think the domino-effect has already begun?
I don’t know. When the protests happened in Belarus, it seemed like the whole country took to the streets. I thought, how could Lukashenko possibly stay in power after that? It turned out that, if you have the support of the army and the police, that’s not hard to do.
So, I don’t think attacking these “kings” head-on has been a successful strategy.
One alternative is to try building parallel networks and organisations that would engage in meaningful work outside of politics until they grow strong enough to start to have political weight, which could then be used in a time of crisis/opportunity.
Another is to engage in creative ideological work: create cultural narratives that “the kings” would have to, or even choose to, operate within. (I play with this sometimes—e.g., in The Tsar Monk and the Psychedelic GULAG—but it really is just imaginative, humorous play and not work.)
I guess it’s not one or two things that needs to happen for the tide to change. It has to be a confluence of many different factors, of many people playing many different roles. Then, the biggest task for a political organiser is to propose a strategy that has many compelling roles for many different people to take on.
The West has looked to people like Alexei Navalny to make a difference, but many are not aware of his nationalistic and often bigoted views. Do you think, if given the chance, people like him would not make preferable leaders, or do you think all change is welcome when it comes to the current regime?
I don’t think Navalny is a bigot. This word might have applied to him in his early 30s, 12-15 years ago, but he’s evolved a lot since then.
The most nationalistic thing about him today is that he wants a visa regime between Russia and Central Asian countries, and I don’t see more of an issue with that than I see with Russians having to get a visa to go to Europe. (Which I do have an issue with on a personal level—I don’t like borders and visa regimes in general—but that’s beside the point.)
Realistically speaking, I think Navalny is about as good a leader as we can hope for. The problem—apart from the fact that he might spend the rest of his life in jail—is that one guy isn’t enough. He needs a good team, and I’m less and less impressed with his team as time goes by. And further than that, that team needs a broader environment to exist in—people to make alliances with, to compete with, to be challenged by. But at the moment, I don’t see how a new independent political force would be allowed to be born.
And even if we imagine some fairy-tale scenario where Putin disappears, honest elections are held, and Navalny, or even somebody better than him, finds themselves in the President’s seat, I’m not sure that what happens next will be pretty.
There is, for example, Kadyrov—a terrorist, autocratic leader of Chechnya, who has his own army and a relationship with Putin that allows him to do whatever he pleases. What is a democratic, law-oriented President going to do with him? If he’s not prosecuted, we can’t talk about a rule of law. If the President moves against him, there’s a danger of a third Chechen war.
So, I don’t know. I do wish Navalny freedom and would like to see what he’d do with it.
One of my favorite works of literature of all time, Bulgakov's "Master and Margarita", was a great display of social critique in its time, while a more recent form of critique has been for example the group Pussy Riot. What are your favorite modern Russian societal critics or works of art?
You should definitely check out Victor Pelevin if you haven’t already. His work shares many qualities with Bulgakov’s—it’s social satire, it’s magic realism, but it’s also philosophy for the masses.
I’m very impressed with Roman Volobuev’s TV series Just Imagine Things We Know and The Last Minister, but I don’t think English subtitles are available.
Artem Loskutov is an interesting artist to watch. His biggest contribution is the absurdist May Day rally called Monstration, which I’ve described in conversation with John Horgan here.
Russia has a history of major anarchistic influencers and events, from Bakunin and Tolstoy to the Kronstadt rebellion. Do you think this is because of the zeitgeist (prior and during the Russian Revolution) or is it something embedded in the Russian mentality in general? Are you personally familiar with the classic anarchistic texts produced in Russia, and if so, how do you think they relate to modern times?
I have a basic understanding of Bakunin’s and Tolstoy’s views, but can’t say I’ve read either one deeply.
There are definitely anarchistic tendencies in the Russian psyche, but trying to articulate them would be a whole project. There’s a quote from Berdyayev that comes to mind:
“The mutually contradictory properties of the Russian people may be set out thus: despotism, the hypertrophy of the State, and on the other hand anarchism and licence; cruelty, a disposition to violence, and again kindliness, humanity and gentleness; a belief in rites and ceremonies, but also a quest for truth; individualism, a heightened consciousness of personality, together with an impersonal collectivism; nationalism, laudation of self, and universalism, the ideal of the universal man; an eschatological messianic spirit of religion, and a devotion which finds its expression in externals: a search for God, and a militant godlessness; humility and arrogance; slavery and revolt. But never has Russia been bourgeois.”
You work as a visual artist, in a way I would personally describe as "psychedelic comic book style". What would you say are your biggest influences when it comes to visual aesthetics?
The main reason my illustrations look the way they do is my drawing skills are very limited, so I either go for a very primitive aesthetic or, more often, trace photos. Lately I’ve been working with other artists: Giorgos Terzakis, from Greece, has done a number of covers for Psychopolitica, and Jason Novak has done line drawings for a couple of issues. I’m working with both of them on this upcoming China installment. I hope that, with time, a kind of a shared aesthetic will emerge, which will be bigger than any one of us.
As for the influences, one particular work I can point to is Blueprints for a Lonely Person by Viktor Pivovarov. It uses the aesthetic of Soviet infographics to present “blueprints” for “skies for a lonely person,” “dreams for a lonely person,” “everyday objects for a lonely person,” etc. I love this juxtaposition of the surreal and the mundane.
Besides writing articles and doing art, you also have a podcast of your own. Where would you like to see the talks (and guests) go in the future?
I want to experiment with the form: maybe do some monologues, call-in shows, or livestreams.
There’s something I call “the weird news project” that I’ve been working on in the newsletter—it might acquire a podcast dimension too.
One idea that I’ve been thinking about for a long time is turning excerpts from long-form conversations into animations.
And then I also want to get back to two things I’ve done in the past: one is wide-ranging conversations with friends, like the one I used to do every other week with John Horgan, or the couple I’ve done with David Poleski; and the other is irregular conversations with guests on their areas of expertise—like authors Tanya Luhrmann and Gary Lachman.
You have spent time in the United States, among other places of course. What do you think are biggest differences between the Russian frame of mind compared to the U.S. one, and what do you think are the aspects of (the most common) Russian mindscape that makes it totally unique to other cultures?
Somebody left a comment to the conversation I’ve had with Glenn Loury, quoting an American woman who was asked on TV about her experience dating Russian men: she rolled her eyes and said, “they all want to talk about the meaning of life!” The comment was poking fun at my style of conversation, which they saw as impractical, endless philosophising that doesn’t go anywhere.
I think that points to a major difference between Russians and Americans. Americans are very practical and entrepreneurial, they want to get things done and to benefit from the results of their work. Russians are often more interested in wondering about things unseen, like “meaning” or “the soul.”
A cynical, though not completely wrong, take on this is that this philosophising is a substitute for work, a sign of laziness or apathy. The numerous crises of the 20th century taught us that neither individual nor civilizational success is likely: your money may become worthless on a random Thursday, a big war or a revolution may destroy the entire social order you’ve been trying to build, being innocent does not mean you won’t go to jail, and so forth. So then—why strive?
I try to marry these two tendencies in my work—to make the search for a deeper meaning a part of a creative, project-based method that actually gets things done.
If you had to choose a country or an environment, where you would like to spend the rest of your life, what would it be?
Since this is fantasy play—unfortunately, I can’t easily choose countries and environments—I’ll lean into the fantasy bit. It would be half an acre of land next to a prosperous village, which in turn is close to a big city, in a beautiful version of Russia that doesn’t exist.
Thank you very much for this fascinating interview! What are your plans for the rest of this year of 2022?
Figuring out a more practical answer to the previous question—maybe not for the rest of my life, but for the next year or a few. Marrying. Continuing to work on The Glenn Show and making Glenn a household name. Developing a regular rhythm for Psychopolitica, doing more collaborations, growing my audience. Increasing my income. Taking better care of my health. Returning to meditation, deepening my dream practice. Being a better friend. Learning to play the guitar properly. There’s a lot to do!
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