Putin, Muratov, and Shinkaruk

This afternoon I heard on BBC that Muratov, the chief editor of Novaya Gazeta was awarded a Nobel prise. I googled Novaya Gazeta; I’ve found it informative, a better read than Izvestia. I found there a reference to Putin congratulating Muratov for his winning the Nobel prise. I looked up the article. It was not complimentary; Putin discussed Muratov’s Nobel prise against the background of Berdyaev’s – a Russian existentialist philosopher – never obtaining it.

Putin’s knowledgeable reference to Berdyaev brought me back for more than forty years, to Czechoslovakia of 1967. At the Hegelian congress, which took place in Prague, I asked Shinkaruk, a participant from Kiev University, whether people in the Soviet Union read Solovyov and Berdyaev. He replied ‘More than Lenin and Marks.’

Incredible? I must explain. Shinkaruk wrote a book on Hegel, and he wrote an interesting paper on Hegel for the conference, in German, but he didn’t trust himself to read it for the conference. He asked me for help, and I read his paper at his request. Then I interpreted Shinkaruk’s discussion with the West German philosophers, who tried their best to denigrate him: ‘How could a Soviet philosopher pretend to understand Hegel?’ I interpreted the discussion with gusto; Shinkaruk was well versed in Hegel.

Delighted, Shinkaruk wanted to donate me a bottle of vodka. I told him that I was deeply offended, and that there was only one way he could make it right: ‘If we drink the bottle together.’

He invited me to his room in a hotel somewhere on the outskirts of Prague. In the end we drank two and a half bottles of vodka. It was in the course of that evening that I asked Shinkaruk my question concerning Solovyov and Berdyaev.

I met Shinkaruk once again, twenty years later, in Brighton, at the World Congress of Philosophical Societies. I attended the Congress as an unemployed philosopher, Shinkaruk as the Head of the delegation of Soviet Philosophers. I interpreted for him again, this time in Russian-English; I interpreted his discussion with the Mayor of Brighton.

I would like to know what happened to Shinkaruk; what happened to him when the Soviet Union disintegrated? In our long discussion I asked him about Ukraine and Russia. He said: ‘If I were not a Communist, I would fight the Russians.’

Can someone inform me about him?