# Muddle Instead of Music. Addendum to the response to the review

Henry de Overwood

MMMDCXXXI. Muddle Instead of Music. Addendum to the response to the review. - March 13, 2025.

Muddle Instead of Music. Addendum to the response to the review.


To my thoughts expressed in the previous miniature (MMMDCXXX. Thanks to the Lyuber for the review (for a fascinating review from a lucky person on some of my miniatures). The response to the review. - March 11, 2025) I would like to add the following theses.


The biography of the author of the interview says that his father "worked in the helicopter Design Bureau ... , his father was the chief designer of ... helicopter ... His mother worked as a translator at the same Design Bureau."


I have a question: what kind of chief designer is this if his son can't express his thoughts in a clear way? I quote his son's (the author of the interview) words: "These... people, in my opinion, are extremely desperate [that is, who has lost hope], lonely, and completely have no idea what to cling to in their everyday lives..."


What does "nothing to cling to" mean?


What should they catch on? [Through] Clothes? For furniture? [Through skin of] Hand? For a branch with thorns? - Not a clear expression.


I was interested in it, just as I was interested in and continue to be interested in the manner of speaking of another high-ranking government official. For example: "Leo Tolstoy, as a mirror of the Russian Revolution."


So, (with) [through] what to cling to [to catch on] and what to cling to [to catch on].


After some thought, I came to the conclusion that the closest image in meaning is the leaves that the wind carries along a ground.


The flight of leaves carried by the wind is a good illustration of the words "nothing to cling to." (There is a novel in a world literature called Gone with the Wind, dedicated to major social transformations in the United States.) (The author of the novel is Margaret Mitchell).


If we accept this explanation (leaves carried by the wind), then the meaning of the statement of the author of the interview becomes clearer: those whom the author of the interview means, they do not have what gives a person stability in life.


And what gives a person stability in life?


Today, as I heard on the radio, is the anniversary of a sharp turn in the fate of Alexander Ulyanov, the elder brother of a major government official, Vladimir Ulyanov. [March 1 (13), 1887]


It would seem that getting such an element in a biography is like getting a yoke around swimmer's neck in the middle of a river.


However, Vladimir Ulyanov was very successful in his life.


He had some rights and privileges from his birth. In his youth (after the situation that happened to his older brother Alexander) Vladimir had to appeal to the authorities with petitions. In these papers, he was writing: "from the nobleman [of Russian Empire] Ulyanov."


Vladimir had a positive family upbringing. Biographers write that his mother taught her son to self-discipline. Vladimir studied well at the gymnasium [secondary school], and history has not recorded any mention of his problems in his studies at the gymnasium.


It is difficult to say anything specific about his (university) education: the professional experience of a sworn attorney's assistant was quite brief. Perhaps the self-discipline acquired in childhood helped him successfully prepare for the exams as an external student (at the university).


The future first chairman of the first Soviet government undoubtedly possessed abilities, which include (in particular) an observation. The experience of his work (activity) as a landowner and the experience of his life in a Siberian exile (among the peasants) convinced him that it was more profitable to side not with the ruling strata, but with the low-income working masses. ("... Centuries of serfdom and decades of forced post-reform ruin have accumulated mountains of hatred, malice and desperate determination [i.e., readiness for vigorous, aggressive actions, regardless of risk and danger]. The desire to sweep away the state-owned church, the landlords, and the landowner government, to destroy all the old forms and regulations of land ownership, to clear a land..."- Vladimir Lenin "Leo Tolstoy, as a mirror of the Russian Revolution").


Perhaps his wife (Nadezhda) and his wife's mother (who lived permanently with her daughter, and therefore with her son-in-law) helped the intellectual processing of information. By the time his wife's mother arrived in Siberia with her daughter (to Vladimir Ulyanov, her daughter's fiance), she had at least one published book (which was published simultaneously in Russian and in Polish).


Positive family upbringing (self-discipline) and the experience of writing the first significant book in the Siberian exile ("The Development of Capitalism in Russia ") transformed into an extraordinary literary fecundity. A kind of political graphomania can also be attributed to (prominent) abilities.


To privileges, to positive family upbringing, to abilities, - connections are added (for example, kinship and family ties).


Before emigrating, Vladimir Ilyich got into a difficult situation, police tried to take away his passport [for abroad trips]. But he managed to convince a police official that he could cause trouble for official (in Lenin's biographies there are vague, obscure references to relatives - on his mother's line - who are in the highest spheres of St. Petersburg. The (sharp) career growth of Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (after the marriage) testifies in favor of this assumption). The police official who initially took away Vladimir Ulyanov's passport [for abroad trips] have heard something convincing and returned the passport to the young Ulyanov. A potential relative of high-ranking St. Petersburg officials has gone into emigration (in Western Europe).


The witnesses at the wedding (a church ceremony - a wedding in a church), as biographers write, were gendarmes. It was necessary to negotiate with them. Apparently, either the bride Nadezhda entered the case, or (more likely) the bride's mother (a respectable woman, the widow of a civil servant, although deceased, but a respectable man, as proved by the high-ranking metropolitan position of the living brother (of brother of the deceased husband-civil servant). The request of a respectable widow, an elderly woman, can be treated with attention.


Further, the connections multiplied: for example, Vladimir Ulyanov's connections in social democratic (social democracy) circles allowed him to free himself from the Austrian arrest after the outbreak of the First World War. Some historians say that the relations in the German social democracy has helped Vladimir Ulyanov to solve the problem with the return to Russia via Germany.


From Germany to Russia Vladimir Ulyanov was moving through the Sweden. It seems that one of the influential Swedish Social Democrats gave Vladimir Ulyanov either a coat or boots (footwear) (or maybe both).


In Russia, Vladimir Ulyanov was greeted 'with fanfare'. He performed (with a speech) at the Finlyandsky railway station, standing on an armored car. The meeting was attended by Russian Social Democrats (Mensheviks), including N.S. Chkheidze, who headed the Council (Soviet) of Deputies. This Council ensured the legal security of Vladimir Ulyanov's return to Russia.


Enumerating everything that created the stability in Vladimir Ulyanov's life is a rather voluminous task.


So let's limit (so far) ourselves to the mentioned:


1. Privileges,

2. Positive family education,

3. Abilities,

4. Connections (kinship, family, political...)


....


....


Although Ilya Nikolaevich Ulyanov (Vladimir Ulyanov's father) was a "civilian general," he did not become famous for any abilities or achievements. Before the sharp rise in his career that followed his marriage, he attracted attention for his accuracy and consistency: he regularly recorded the data of the meteorological station in a special journal.


Accordingly, his son Vladimir, although he was very active in the field of political literature, did not always write clearly (in a clear way).


Consider, for example, the headline of the article "Leo Tolstoy, as a mirror of the Russian Revolution."


Is it correct to compare the outstanding writer Leo Tolstoy with a mirror (an inanimate object)? From the same "series": a ray (a ray of the Russian revolution), a fresh air (a fresh air of the Russian revolution), a purifying rain (a purifying rain of the Russian revolution) - my examples, nevertheless, are all from natural phenomena... .... somehow I can't call Leo Tolstoy an inanimate household (everyday) object.


Leo Tolstoy, it seems to me, should be compared to some philosopher, a thinker of global importance, acting during a period of civilizational transformations.


(I leave the "Russian revolution" without consideration - the author of the article himself wrote in various works about the bourgeois (bourgeois-democratic) and proletarian revolutions. "Peasant bourgeois revolution" - ???!!!).


In general, just as the rank of "civilian general" raises some reflections, so does the creative scientific potential of the chief designer of the helicopter arouse interest - if the son of this chief designer talks about people who have nothing to "cling to" in life.


March 13, 2025, 19:20 (7:20 p.m.)


Translation from Russian into English: March 14, 2025 00:18

Владимир Владимирович Залесский ' Сумбур вместо музыки. Дополнение к ответу на рецензию. '.


{ 3660. Сумбур вместо музыки. Дополнение к ответу на рецензию. - 13 марта 2025 г.

MMMDCXXXI. Muddle Instead of Music. Addendum to the response to the review. - March 13, 2025.


Vladimir Zalessky Internet-bibliotheca. Интернет-библиотека Владимира Залесского}