Said Gafurov
Gafurov, Said Zakirovich is a Russian politician, economist, sociologist, orientalist, bureaucrat and opera critic.
Early life
He is a Gorky Tatar by origin. He graduated in 1992 from the College of Asian and African studies at Moscow State University. In 1997 Gafurov defended his Ph.D. dissertation at the Faculty of Economics of the Moscow State University. He was a Counselor of the Russian Federation. He is the author of monographs and articles. He is a son of Professor Gafurov Zakerya Shagizanovich – colonel, professional revolutionary, creator of the theory of construction of revolutionary armies in developing countries and Gafurova Anisa Sofovna – a professional artist, secretary of the Moscow Union of Artists. Gafurov married Darya Mitina – a prominent Russian Communist leader, Secretary of the United Communist Party, former co-chairperson of the Left Front, 1st Secretary of Russian Komsomol and former member of State Duma. They have two sons.Government service
Under the Yevgeniy Primakov government, Gafurov served as Director of Department of State property of Finance, Credit, Insurance and Foreign Trade organizations of the Ministry of State Property of Russia. Later he served as a Counselor for Russian Inter-budget relations in the Ministry of Regional Development.Beginning in 2011 Gafurov worked as Deputy Chief Editor responsible for economic issues of the Russian monthly journal VVP known for active support of Vladimir Putin. Under his guidance VVP became one of the most significant bastions of champions of neo-Keynesian and Marxist anti-neo-liberal economic policy in Russia. Nevertheless, the Russian liberals valued Gafurov highly and the Russian liberal Government regularly employed Gafurov as a consultant for foreign economic relations issues.
For various Russian Economic Ministries Gafurov wrote monographs on Russian foreign economic relations, including "The WTO mechanisms and non-discriminatory operations of Russian oil and gas companies in the European Energy markets", "The initiative 'Partnership for Modernization' and the Russian national interests" ; "The Intergovernmental Commissions and the modernization of the Russian economy".
Anti-crisis policy
Based on the crises of 1998-1999, 2008-2009 and 2014 - the present, Gafurov elaborated a concept of Mismatch or Disbalance of Credit-Monetary and Fiscal-Budget policies as the main reason of the ineffectiveness of anti-crisis policy. Both the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance rejected the conclusions of Gafurov based on the absence of such mismatch. However, many meaningful points of Gafurov's concept remained unanswered.Scholar
Political economy, theory of property
Gafurov is the author of an empirical research monography "Essay on Experience of Comparative Analysis of Privatization and Formation of Corporate Securities Markets in Developing and Post-socialist Countries in 1991-1996" and works on the theory and practice of the political economy of property.In 2013 Gafurov started working in the field of reorganisation of international political-economic networks guided by Prof. Alexander Buzgalin. Gafurov regularly spoke at international political-economic Congresses, stressing high-scale social demand for political-economic research from the State and business. In his anti-crisis policy concept, Gafurov followed the Keynesian approach. He created a model of interrelations between credit-monetary and fiscal-budget policies based on institutional differences between governmental bodies.
Equity research
In the late 90s, in several articles in the journal of Рынок ценных бумаг, Gafurov elaborated an original approach to equity research based on the mathematical concept of Ergodic theory. The so-called "Gafurov theorem" states that statistical methods can be used in equity research if only the time series of securities' prices are subject to Ergodicity principles. The practical significance of the theorem is in its first corollary based on the Bayesian approach. When forecasting the market on the basis of the experience gained, the forecast error increases in accordance with the size of the changes of the market. This means that, during crises, decisions could not be taken on the basis of the forecast level of market decline, as it is unpredictable in principle. Decisions on market entry and exit must be taken on other principles of portfolio management. The compendium of Gafurov's ideas on equity research and securities analysis was published in the monograph "The philosophy of Equity research".Orientalism
In early 2019 the Russian-German Publishing house "Direct-media" published a book by Gafurov "The Cross, the Crescent and the Arab nation: ideological currents in the Middle East, which is a compendium of the basic ideas of Gafurov's orientalism. The introduction to the book is a short review of Gafurov's philosophical and methodological principles. The Russian critic called the book influential but controversial stressing that "Gafurov is trying to break the discourse on Arab countries imposed on Russia from the outside".Gafurov is an author of a short article on the philosophical ideas of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. Its most interesting point is that Gafurov proves that ideas of Gaddafi are similar to those of anarchists.
He is an author of works on the economy, privatization and development of economies, privatization and securities markets of the Arabic, and Asiatic and African countries.
Gafurov also works on the problems of Islamic sects: ismailism, druzes, and alawisms. He, in particular, supposed that all distinctions between flows in Islam were actually taken to the questions of implementation of law, but not dogmatic or personal reasons, because in an order to be a Muslim it is necessary and enough to make public acceptance of credo of faith, consisting only of two propositions: that there is only one god and that Muhammed is one of his prophets.
He supposed that registration of separate flow is a problem of codification and creation of a separate, independent "mazkhab" a legal school and norms of laws, distinguishing this flow from other directions in Islam.
Gafurov defended the memory of Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah – an assassinated Fatimid caliph who was later claimed insane by Ismailities, Christians and Sunnites, and deified by the Druzes as well as defense of Syrian and Turkish Alawites.
Marxist studies and political philosophy
Gafurov is a Russian Marxist thinker. He belongs to the school of the Alexander Buzgalin, who was the supervisor of his Ph.D. thesis. Despite this connection, Gafurov's ideas are close to Marxist positivism and he moved far away from dialectical metaphysics of Buzgalin. Gafurov rejects concepts of the Asiatic mode of production and the State capitalism nature of the Soviet Union. In local politics, he defends the idea of reconciliation of Stalinist, Trotskyist and Maoist tendencies based on the idea that the differences have only historical significance.Since the first term of president Putin, Gafurov has elaborated the concept of Russian Bonapartism and the attempts by the bourgeoisie for Liberal Revenge.
He champions the quantitative theory of imperialism, which means holds that any stronger imperialism is worse than any weaker one. That contradicts the Leninist defeatist position. Gafurov's position allows tactical alliances with weaker imperialist approaches such as Russian or Iranian imperialism. Gafurov rejects the existence of Chinese imperialism, although he supports Vietnam in its conflict on the Paracel islands while supporting China in all other conflicts in the South China Sea.
Psycholinguistics
Gafurov asserted that the hypocrisy and duplicity of the Anglo-Saxon peoples have deep roots and are associated with the grammar of the English language. Referring to the tradition of St. Augustin, Gafurov stressed that the past is an integral part of current existence. The present is a fleeting moment. A human is his past, no more and no less, and a nation is its history.Stressing that no nation other than the US has ever used nuclear weapons against cities, Gafurov claimed that the Americans do not understand the hypocrisy of their position on nuclear non-proliferation because, for the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, they use the simple past tense.
Political views
Geopolitics
Gafurov disapproves of NATO, neocolonialism and neo-racism, and is sharply critical of current European Union policy in Africa and in Europe.Gafurov is one of leaders of the Russian Social Forum movement. Gafurov participated in writing program documents about the Russian Movement in defense of Labour. In 2017 Gafurov was one of the key organizers of the World Festival of Youth and Students in Sochi, Russia. He made at least 11 speeches during the Festival.
Political science
In 2016 -2017 he formulated the so-called "Gafurov postulate" of political science on Russian TV. According to this hypothesis, in any election "from the United States to the DPRK, from India to Russia, from Switzerland to the People's China, from Germany to Syria," the number of illegal, "thrown in" votes is approximately the same, in cases of one or two candidates ranging from 5% to 10% of votes. Gafurov assumes the existence of a stable mathematical expectation of this figure in the presence of a sufficiently large number of polling stations and a large number of elections. "Gafurov's Political Science Hypothesis" is used to calculate the budgets of election campaigns in Russia.Gafurov had struggled to support the Syrian government, but after direct involvement of Russian forces in the Syrian conflict, he started to speak against the main line of Russian propaganda. Nevertheless, his views are accepted by the Kremlin.
Syria
Since 2011 Gafurov has actively supported the Syrian government in the Russian media, including Russian media in foreign languages. Gafurov was a Deputy Chairman of the Russian Committee for Solidarity with Peoples of Libya and Syria since its founding. Gafurov defended the Syrian government during the uprising in Deraa pointing out that it was a struggle for arable land between the Druzes and Bedouins.Gafurov created an idea that in order to settle the Syrian crisis the Russian Foreign Policy should get a support from the United States Catholic lobby.
Libya
In 2011 during the popular uprising in Libya, Gafurov became one of the most prominent Gaddafi supporters in Russia, though Gafurov claimed that he did not take sides, stating: "Any barricade has only two sides. And if there are your enemies on both it simply means that this is not your barricade".However, in practice Gafurov's articles defended Kaddafi's side based on
- the thesis that the uprising is a tribal reaction to Gaddafi's attempts to modernise Libya;
- the fact that the insurgents were led by former Minister of Justice in the Gaddafi's government;
- the economic interests of Russia's oil and gas sector.
The Ukraine
In February 2014 Gafurov declared what he considered should be the principles of Ukrainian settlement:- Down with the fascist self-proclaimed government in Kiev and its IMF-inspired economiс program
- No annexation of Crimea by Russia
- Federalisation of Ukraine so that the regions of Ukraine have the right to self-determination to choose between Euro-integration free-trade zone with the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus independence from both.
In February 2017, Gafurov in his political TV-show on the Pravda.ru channel publicly promised that he would start a campaign to return Crimea to the Ukraine the day after the USA returned Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona to Mexico.
Because of his public statements Gafurov is suspected to be one of the organisers of a secret channel to transfer refugees - mainly members of the Communist party of the Ukraine, "Borotba" and other leftist organisations, who were persecuted and tortured at Maidan and some other regions in the Ukraine - to Russia.
Africa
In 2016 Gafurov twice spoke at the Congresses of the POLISARIO in Algeria as a guest.Gafurov supported Côte d'Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo against another Côte d'Ivoire President Alassane Ouattara.
Art critic
In 2012 Gafurov became dissatisfied with the level of Russian opera criticism. He began writing operatic criticisms in Russian media including Literaturnaya gazeta, Pravda.ru, Svobodnaya pressa, as a result of the sharp rise in the level of Russian opera since the beginning of the millennium. He has concentrated on social aspects of the theatrical side of opera and less on the musical side. It is accepted that Gafurov has reestablished the school of Marxist opera critic in Russian. Gafurov awkwardly believes that opera should be the working class art.Russian criticism
Gafurov is the author of works on philosophy and psychology. Gafurov introduces material on stock market philosophy and psychology, as well as mathematical concepts that are not common among Russian specialists in the humanities. He was criticized for the "dilettantism" in his psychological and philosophical works, but these charges were dropped by his opponents, usually as a result of scientific discussions.It is generally accepted that works by Gafurov are characterized by excessive rigor, unduly restricting the subject of psychology and philosophy in order to ensure formal scientific consistency.
His epistemological views can be described as extreme nominalism. He stressed:
In ontology "existence", as Gafurov understands it, is "the ability to provide any object three spatial and one temporal coordinates." In general, the epistemological views of Gafurov are close to Marxist positivism.
In the field of aesthetics, Gafurov's views are characterized by snobbery, arrogance and mechanistics. Thus, he denies any aesthetic value of modern popular music, considering it to be "a set of ordered acoustic vibrations, which can be compared with each other". Comparing the elementary theory of music popular music and classical music, Gafurov shows that popular music is a "primitive step back, an expression of the class will of the bourgeoisie to the stupefaction of the working people." He categorically opposed the idea that classical music and popular music are "incomparable". Gafurov consistently pursued the idea that an "absence of taste" and "bad taste" are fundamentally different things. Bad taste according to Gafurov is "love for Haydn and no love for Brahms". Absence of taste is to be "more likely to listen to popular singers than good symphonic orchestra."
Gafurov understands ethics only as narrative, "positive, rather than normative": "... Ethics and behavior are subject to the same laws. If you think about it, ethics is a function of expediency.... Ethics is the feasibility of changing the external conditions ". Peremptory ethical norms do not exist for him.
Gafurov reduces the subject of psychology to the analysis of experimental data. The subject of psychology, he said, is "the higher nervous activity". Gafurov's ideas are characterized by the reduction of mass psychology in rational behavior and the subject of research, he sees in the analysis of the hidden rationality in irrational at first glance, the behavior of the masses. Gafurov's researches are in stark contrast to his own methodological orientations. The notion of a hidden rationality contradicts the notion that subject of psychology is only the analysis of experiments.
Intellectual property
Gafurov is an open though careful opponent of the concept of Intellectual property. He states: "Letters are everyone's property". He argues his position by the common good and by the fact that anyhow the state and philanthropists sponsor most of the modern culture. It puts Gafurov in rather anecdotical and hypocritical position when he invites to his TV-shows Russian scenario play-writers or Russian composers involved in copyright disputes. He was one of the first Russian scholars who published his Ph.D. dissertation on the internet as early as in 1996. This led to his involvement in some Russian Dissernet scandals as a source of violated copyright. In 2010-ies Gafurov was several times accused by his opponents in Plagiarism by publishing under his name short news articles from Greek, Indian and Bengali radical Marxist sources.In popular culture
Gafurov is generally believed to be the prototype of the main hero of Darya Mitina's humoristic short stories - "The highest level of relations" and "Talks in bed". He is depicted as a simple-minded, naive, henpecked husband who pretends to be an ultra male chauvinist putting him in funny situations because of it.Gafurov is a frontman at Russian Internet-TV weekly shows at www.pravda.ru : Point of view: Orient, Point of view: Economy and Point of view: Behind the Ocean.
Gafurov is fluent in Arabic and often speaks on different Arabic-language TV-channels.