Valdai Club

In many of today’s discussions about the influence of the coronavirus, the idea can be heard that the destructiveness of the coronavirus also contains what can be called creative destruction. Every crisis breaks the old and clears the way for the new, paving the way for the solidarity and cooperation of people.

Oddly enough, despite the unprecedented prosperity of mankind, the past few years have been extremely alarming, overwhelmed by gloomy predictions and talk about the destruction of the old world order and the emergence of some new one. And now all the fears, all the negative dreams have come true: the coronavirus is everywhere. Will it be able to play the role of the creative destruction necessary for the emergence of a newly-arranged world? And is it also necessary to understand whether the coronavirus is socio-political or biological in nature?

Ordinary people, leaders, analysts and experts are no longer able to engage in a constructive conversation. They are incapacitated by the uncontrollable flood of information, whose claim to credibility is suspect, and by the disintegration of the hierarchy of news, data, facts, and information sources, a hierarchy essential for a culture and a civilization.

The Middle East is either on the eve of a new round of tensions, which threaten to ignite global conflict, or of a transformation into a successful, developing region. The question is not an idle one, because if you get out of the web of fake news and malicious or involuntary lies, then the contradictory, multidirectional trends in the current development of the Middle East become more apparent.

Many people will remember the year 2019, but one of its most important features has been the impressive growth of what can be called social activity or even aggression. And perhaps this is also a sign of growing global chaos.

The freedom of expression, as well as the right to reliable information, which are often (and mistakenly) combined into one concept - “freedom of speech” - are going through conflicting times. It seems to have never been so easy to communicate as it is now, but, all the same, people roam blindly in the all-consuming fog of information and risk wandering into a place from which they can’t find a way out. Perhaps today, new communications are the main threat to peace.

World War II began eighty years ago. But did it end six years after it began? The war’s hostilities ended in 1945 and the conflict later culminated with the trials in Nuremberg and Tokyo. But, strangely enough, its presence is still felt in modern politics, culture and our social lives. This phenomenon requires our attention, although Theodore Adorno doubted whether culture existed in principle after Auschwitz.

It seems that following the collapse of the bipolar world, we are not moving at all to a new multi-polar planet of equal opportunities and open cooperation between countries. Rather, we've found ourselves in a foggy ocean without any poles and, therefore, no means of orienting ourselves.

On May 21, the Valdai Club was planning to hold in Vienna its sixth European conference, in partnership with a number of respected Austrian organizations. It was supposed to feature leading Russian and European, including Austrian, experts. However, the Austrian co-organizers cancelled their participation on short notice. In his welcome speech at the Russian Embassy in Austria, Andrey Bystritskiy, the Valdai Club Chairman, said that this must have been caused by the recent domestic developments. “The important thing is not the problems that arise, but our attitude to them,” he said. The conference will take place in another venue (Grand Hotel Wien) and dialogue between Russia and Austria will continue against all the odds.

Today’s world may have fallen into one of the most dangerous situations in its entire history. The world as we know it seems to face death. And the reason for this is the discrepancy between the intellectual capabilities of mankind and its power in the context of globality. From now on, the entire humanity has one destiny. But who is able to manage it properly? What type of rationality do we need to make decisions of global scale?