Two-face Chronos. Glossary of the Reversed Time

The article explores the history of the concept “retromania” and analyzes possibilities and specific features of its application to the Russian socio-cultural situation of the 21-st century. The distinction of Russia retromania resides, in the first place, in the scale of its spread incompatible with the scale of pop-culture in the space of which this term was born. Secondly, Russian retromania faces away from the recent past; it is directed to the deep past reaching archaic layers of culture. Retromania acquires forms of a new political metaphysics — necrocracy, total involvement of heroes of the past, especially war participants as witnesses and actors of modernity. The paper offers symbolic forms of work with the past and practices derived from them. The general strategy of necrocacy is depicted through tantalizations — the prevalence of death value regarding eros at all levels of social psychology and ideology. Chronos is also considered as time that changes its direction and flies backwards. The article introduces new forms of the existence of Russian Chronos marked with the concepts of totalgy, chronocide, the newest Middle Ages, uchronia, schizofascism, New Moscovia, topochron, and chronocracy. Totalgy is of an emotional nature and is expressed in a longing for totality, totalitarialism, and is fixed in ideology. Chronocide is violence towards the natural course of time. And in this respect, one can observe continuity with Soviet ideology where all the rhetoric used to be project-based as well as today the past dominates the present. Uchronia implies the construction of a state of timelessness, and the newest Middle Ages are characterized by the increase in religious and political fundamentalism. There is a direct way from fundamentalism to fascism which manifests itself as schizofascism, i.e. fascism under the guise of combating fascism. Such concepts as New Moscovia expressed in the dominance of Moscow in mass consciousness and topochron — the prevalence of topos over chromos were used to analyze the topos of current “retromanian” Russia. The article offers an optimistic scenario of the development expressed by the concept of chonocracy when time in its metaphysical sacred meaning defeats the profane politics of retromania.