Scientist or Magician? “Definitely a scientist,” says Konstantin Loginov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Senior Researcher at the Institute of Language, Literature and History, KarRC RAS. But outside the scientific world, Konstantin Kuzmich is often called a sorcerer … About history and magic, aliens and Japanese women - in an interview with a scientist of "dying out" science - ethnography.
Konstantin Kuzmich leads the long corridors of the Academy of Sciences, opens doors for me and recalls the story of how he got into an awkward situation during his graduate school.
- I knew that it is not customary to open the door in front of Japanese women, in their culture it is considered, let's say, an expression of a certain desire … But you think one thing, but you do as you used to, and I opened the door for a Japanese woman. And she is tall, so powerful - half a head taller than me, I felt like a puppy next to her. And she looked at me like that … And then, when she was leaving, she gave everyone amber - apparently, she still visited somewhere in the Baltic States. So everyone is grateful, and I poured half a glass.
It turns out that you still made a compliment?
- It turns out like this.
Do you have an ethnography department?
- We have a sector of ethnology. There was a sector of ethnography, but our head could not resist, saying: I am an ethnologist, and working in the sector of ethnography is wrong.
Promotional video:
What is the fundamental difference here?
- There is a difference. The great scientist Rybakov said back in the 60s that the ethnographic piece of ice, alas, is thinning and melting. And what remains of it is ethnology, which studies the ethnic in the surrounding world. And ethnography studied (and still studies, but already mainly on the materials of the past) the culture, life and customs of the people.
Are you an ethnologist or an ethnographer?
- Definitely an ethnographer. And I am such a researcher who, describing the past, always brings it to the present. That is, if I caught a phenomenon, hooked it on, then I will definitely say what it was, how it developed and what it is now, if it has survived. Or how he died. Any phenomenon must be taken in dynamics, otherwise it is not interesting. Much knowledge is not wisdom - I teach my students to understand first of all. Especially when you read them something about magic - I tell them: there is magic thinking, as soon as you understand, immerse yourself in it, any thing becomes understandable.
Yes, I was told that you are a sorcerer
- It is not true. I am a scientist who has learned a lot from my work. And a sorcerer is a person who has passed the rite of initiation into sorcerers and works with spirits that are in inferno. These are very deep underground layers. The Vedun works with the spirits of water, earth, forest, fire, that is, with the layer in which we are. And the sorcerer is very bad. Here, you know, obviously ignorance or misunderstanding of people. Here the grandmother says: "Oh, there was such a witch, such a witch … but, really, she did everything only for good." What kind of a witch is this? It is clear that we are talking about a healer. It is necessary to distinguish between these concepts.
And what about witches? They say there are light, there are black …
- Well, somehow I don't really believe in light witches. Although I have, let's say, witch friends, they just belong to the category of born witches. They cannot do evil - one explained to me that if she makes at least a love sentence, that is, she goes against someone else's will, then her children and future generations will feel bad. But these are stories. You understand - I am a scientist and I cannot say anything where you cannot conduct an experiment.
Magic
How did you come to magic yourself? Through legends, stories, fairy tales?
- No, it wasn't like that. When I was little, my mother worked as a journalist in the editorial office, and she was almost kicked out of the party when my grandmother secretly christened my older brother. And then my mother made such an atheist out of me that I, as a high school student, read atheistic lectures in high school and got great pleasure from it. But, you see, scientific knowledge obtained from books does not educate, mentality does not change. For a long time I was an Octobrist, a pioneer, a Komsomol member, a party member, and when I became an ethnographer and began to travel to villages, everything became visible there. After all, I can tell anything, whether for you or for students, but when you see that a person is not doing anything without being blessed (he doesn't even sit down on a bench), you begin to understand a lot in a different way. And then they began to ask for help - they say, you drive, you know people, you see,what and how do they do, let's just try: what if? I try to do what they did in the villages, and I see with horror - it helps!
Why with horror?
- Well, not with horror … with amazement, probably - I don't know what to call it. A complete stupor is yes. It seems like just walked at the right time in the right place, said the right words - and you see the result.
Did you feel any strength?
- I once watched on TV a program about local dowsers - they are called radio aesthetics. He looked, took the wire, bent it, looked - everything shows. Now in Petrozavodsk there are no radio aesthetists of my level, probably. Although in Karelia, very many have the ability to do this: remember, on the coat of arms of the Olonets province there are two vines below? So they looked for minerals, and these abilities for the locals are almost the norm. I carry out diagnostics accurately, but I cannot do many things that any healer does in Petrozavodsk.
Do we have many, shall we say, specialists in the field of magic?
- Well, there are 30-40 people in Petrozavodsk and the nearest suburbs. After all, many do not advertise, but they are slowly treating them. Moreover, among the latter there are people who should not be engaged in this, because they work according to the black book. They, of course, do good, but also evil.
Are there really black books?
- Black Book is generally a feature of the Russian North, and Karelia in particular. In witchcraft, forces are evoked by reading the text - if you want to do evil, you read the text written in black letters; if you want to return the situation to the original - red. But there are more black texts - I was holding the book in my hands.
You tell terrible things …
- I did not understand then what it is. I held it, looked, including the conspiracies of the current owner in the Vepsian language, written on paper for cutting for some reason. The owner rarely used this book - he preferred his own conspiracies, but he was still called "Noida", and this … Well, if you ask a Vepsian: "Are you a sorcerer?" - he agrees. You start working with him, ask questions, collect information, and you just have to call him "Noida" - he is immediately offended: "What have I done wrong to you?" And "noida" in translation from Vepsian is "sorcerer". These are the oddities.
And who can protect from magic or destroy something evil?
- Priests. But it is customary among the people to go to the same specialists in the field of magic, to psychics, and only then to church. And priests have great abilities to eliminate evil, accumulated over thousands of years.
UFO
Why did you choose ethnography?
- Also an almost mystical story. In my childhood, like many children, I said that I would be a sea captain. Until the fourth grade I studied with only "fives", in the fifth there were "three", in the sixth there were already a lot of them. And in 1967, just before the 7th grade, a UFO hovered over my hometown of Vytegra - it hung for a long time, the whole city saw it, and wrote a lot about it. And my mother had a dream that I got up at night and ran barefoot towards the UFO. They threw down a ladder, like a rope ladder from a helicopter, and I climbed it. And someone downstairs says: "Look, look where Loginov climbed." About a week later I went to the library, took Nikolai Nikolaevich Cheboksarov's book "What is Ethnography", read it and realized that I wanted to be an ethnographer, again began to study for "fours" and "fives", and since then my whole life is connected with ethnography.
Why, after a brilliant graduation from Leningrad State University, you did not stay in St. Petersburg, but came to Karelia?
- I came here and saw what I wanted to see. You pass 4-5 bus stops, go out with a basket - and here's the porcini mushrooms. He inflated the boat, went out into the lake opposite the Academy of Sciences - and in the morning three kilograms of okushka. In general, everything is the same as in the provinces, only plus asphalt, civilization and, of course, work - the Academy of Sciences.
How did you meet your wife?
- Dancing. I told her that I was an ethnographer, she kept up the conversation, and that was enough. True, I scared her a little when I saw her off on the first evening. I told her about Queen Tsi Xi, who ruled China, and she decided that not all of my houses were at home. And there are very interesting things, and the life of this queen is like an adventure novel, and the customs that reigned at court are very different from what a person can come up with here in Russia.
The son did not follow in your footsteps?
- No, he is a theoretical physicist. Once he went on an expedition with me and realized that he could not enter someone else's house and say: "Hello, can I talk to you about how you used to live?" I worked with a Japanese woman for a long time - she also could not enter, stood at the gate and asked if it was possible to enter. If you are going, then open the gate, the door and shout in the house. In general, I took her and my son into the house. Although the son wrote down very interesting things. I remember that I was so happy … I was interested in the following question: a person is born in a "shirt", it is clear that it was kept, but where? After all, when mom went to buy something, she took this "shirt" with her, but where was it kept? And my son brought the answer: they kept it in the Bible. It was impossible for icons (although a lot was kept behind icons too), but in the Bible it is already possible.
North
You say that there are witches, sorcerers, psychics …
- Let's do it this way: there are people who consider themselves sorcerers, witches, psychics, but how it really is - I don't know.
But you admit that you have the ability - how to explain this from a scientific point of view?
- It has long been known that the human brain has hardly been studied, so maybe this is not magic, but our brain creates everything. After all, the electrical potential of the brain is greater than that of the Dnepropetrovsk hydroelectric station. Each cell has a tiny charge, but when you multiply it by five billion, you get the DneproHES in the head of each of us. I tell my students that the world is much more complicated than we think. If you do not see a person's aura, it does not mean that it is not there.
Have you ever thought of doing fiction with your knowledge?
- I have one publication in the Sever magazine about a meeting with house spirits. It is called "Meeting in Purgino" - this is a village, the highest point of Zaonezhie. I had to spend the night there, and I saw an entity that is not described anywhere in Russian. And at the same time he described everyone that I was told about. In my opinion, it turned out well. But it was a long time ago. Now I just have no time - I work four jobs. We have the authorities as decided: if you want to earn, you have to work harder. So we are working. After all, I go on an expedition at my own expense.
Like this?
- It's very simple: I burn my gasoline in my car. In Soviet times, I knew that every year they would give me an expedition for at least a month. Now I have to write mountains of paper in order to prove to someone what I need here, in the provinces - in principle I don’t want to get involved with this. It's easier for me to spend my money on science. I recently found a performer - not Fedosova, but approaching her. She has a phenomenal memory - she remembered and wrote down all the lamentations that she once uttered. She only has two notebooks of lullabies. I am not a folklorist, but when such people meet, it is, of course, interesting.
Tell me, does Karelia, from the point of view of an ethnographer, have any characteristic differences?
- Our North stands out sharply among those territories where people live in arable farming. If we take the Pomors, then everything is different there. There was often not even agriculture. So they need to go fishing - they took a boat, loaded food, equipment, put the boat on an ice floe, sat down - and they are waiting for the storm when it will tear off the ice floe with the boat and carry it out to the open sea. A normal peasant will sit on an ice floe and wait until he is carried out into the open sea? Of course not, you have to be a Pomor. And economic, fishing magic is very different. Somewhere near Novgorod, try to write down something about the mermen - nothing, most likely, will work. They grew bread all the time, and they will remember about brownies if they are old enough, but about water ones - not. Our thousands of stories remember about the water, and about how the drowned man was searched for, and about the reasons with which they turned to the water.
As an ethnographer, where would you like to visit? They will give you everything - money, planes, where would you go?
- I don’t even know … If you really approach, now there are almost no old people who would remember everything. In Russia, perhaps, there are no such places left. And outside of Russia no one will understand me - well, how can I ask a Tibetan monk a question? Translators are not a good option, you have to be a native speaker. In general, ethnographers are an endangered scientific people, so I am a dinosaur. And I really want a new person to take my place, but I just can't find a replacement for myself.
Do you like working with students?
- Yes. It’s very cool when information that no one in the world knew before comes into scientific work and students. And then she entered the treasury of the common memory of mankind. This is great and this is what I work for, what warms me up.
