Volume 13 - Issue 75
/ March 2024
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2024.75.03.24
How to Cite:
Logvynenko, Y., Mazurenko, V., Sytnyk, L., & Bilyk, N. (2024). Anti-marxist polemics in Mykola Rudenko’s novel-treatise
“Formula of the Sun”. Amazonia Investiga, 13(75), 285-295. https://doi.org/10.34069/AI/2024.75.03.24
Anti-marxist polemics in Mykola Rudenko’s novel-treatise
“Formula of the Sun”
Антимарксистська полеміка в романі-трактаті Миколи Руденка «Формула Сонця»
Received: January 19, 2024 Accepted: March 2, 2024
Written by:
Yulia Logvynenko1
https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1574-5107
Volodymyr Mazurenko2
https://orcid.org/0009-0005-6058-9499
Larysa Sytnyk3
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-8176-750X
Nadiia Bilyk4
https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2344-5347
Abstract
The research conducted by the Sumy branch of
the Serhii Podolynskyi Scientific Society delves
into the distinctive artistic legacy of the
renowned Ukrainian writer Mykola Rudenko.
This study sheds light on Rudenko's integration
of ideas from the Ukrainian school of physical
economy, which stood in stark contrast to Karl
Marx's political economy. Mykola Rudenko,
known for his literary prowess, often employed
his fictional works to propagate his scientific,
economic, and philosophical theories. The
treatise “Formula of the Sun”, despite its limited
recognition in 20th-century Ukrainian literature,
holds a distinct place deserving comprehensive
exploration. This novel not only showcases
Rudenko's literary craftsmanship but also
provides a platform for dissecting the literary
discourse of the time. Through a combination of
structural, narrative, and polemical elements,
Rudenko articulates his worldview within the
framework of physical economy. This study
endeavors to elucidate the evolution of physical
economy as a counterbalance to Marxian
1
PhD in Philology, Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Humanities, Sumy Regional Teacher Training Institute,
Sumy, Ukraine. WoS Researcher ID: IUP-8823-2023
2
PhD in Technology, Associate Professor at the Department of Social and Humanities, Sumy Regional Teacher Training Institute,
Sumy, Ukraine. WoS Researcher ID: IUQ-5261-2023
3
PhD in Technology, Associate Professor of the Department of Cybernetics and Informatics, Sumy National Agrarian University,
Sumy, Ukraine. WoS Researcher ID: IUQ-0975-2023
4
Doctor of Pedagogical Sciences, Associate Professor, Professor at the Department Pedagogical Skills and Inclusive Education,
M. V. Оstrohradskyi Poltava Academy of Continuous Education, Poltava, Ukraine. WoS Researcher ID: AAB-8827-2022
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economics and to analyze its impact on
Rudenko's prose, as evidenced by “Formula of
the Sun”. Employing methodologies ranging
from analysis and synthesis to a systematic and
hermeneutic approach, the research aims to
unravel the intricate interplay between literature
and economic theory in Rudenko's work.
Keywords: Karl Marx, Mykola Rudenko,
political economy, novel-treatise, physical
economy.
Introduction
Mykola Rudenko is known to the world primarily
as a Ukrainian poet and prose writer, public
person, and founder of the Ukrainian Helsinki
Group, the first legal organization in the
totalitarian USSR to fight against human rights
violations. “The creation of the group is
connected with the signing by the Soviet
government of the Helsinki Agreements, which
became the Final Act of the Conference on
Security and Cooperation in Europe” (Stus
Center, (s.f)). Today, there is a significant
number of scholarly works and publications
covering the human rights activities of Mykola
Rudenko. As for the literary heritage of the artist,
researchers are primarily interested in his poetry,
ignoring works that highlight the ideas of
physical economy. Therefore Mykola Rudenko’s
poetry and prose, and his human rights activities,
have been analyzed, described and documented
in detail, and works on the problems of physical
economy need to be properly studied. The
writer’s work in the field of physical economy,
his model of the architecture of the universe, and
the atypical and unique parallel presentation of
the author’s scientific research in his own works
of fiction remain poorly studied, making the
writer’s artistic heritage a platform for
disseminating the ideas of the Ukrainian
scientific school of physical economy, founded
by Rudenko. The ideas of the representatives of
the Ukrainian school of physical economy are a
completely avant-garde phenomenon and have
not been studied in world science. Among the
most prominent representatives of the Ukrainian
school of physical economy are Podolynskyi S.,
Vernadskyi V. and Rudenko M.: “As for the
Ukrainian school of physical economy, it should
be emphasized that S. Podolynskyi founded it, V.
Vernadskyi made an important step in its
development, and M. Rudenko developed their
ideas, outlined the theoretical foundations of the
school, defined it, and formulated the physical
economy of the universe” (Vorobiova, 2019,
p. 90). The ideas of Ukrainian scientists were far
ahead of their time аnd are of interest for modern
studies. We made the first attempt at a detailed
analysis of Mykola Rudenko's novel, in which
the author presented his scientific hypothesis.
Theoretical framework
Since the creative heritage of Mykola Rudenko
reflects an entire era and includes a whole palette
of literary genres, it has been studied by more
than one generation of scholars and literary
critics. We see three separate vectors of research
into the works and activities of Mykola Rudenko:
1) fiction; 2) scientific works; 3) public (human
rights) activities of the writer. The difficulty of
studying the work of Mykola Rudenko lies in the
fact that he included serious scientific hypotheses
in his fiction. This complicates the research, as it
requires the efforts of scholars from various
fields of science to create a holistic picture of
Mykola Rudenko's worldview. Therefore, today,
scholars interested in Mykola Rudenko's work
are studying a small part of his works.
The writer's life was studied by I. Vlasenko
(Vlasenko, 2007), Е.Sverstiuk (Sverstiuk, 2013),
and others in order to review the literary and
political discourse of the twentieth century and to
investigate Mykola Rudenko's contribution to the
development of Ukrainian literature. Their works
allowed us to understand the spirit of the era and
the reasons for the writer's worldview revolution.
Logvynenko, Y., Mazurenko, V., Sytnyk, L., Bilyk, N. / Volume 13 - Issue 75: 285-295 / March, 2024
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A valuable source of studying the writer’s life
dominants is his memoir novel “Life is the
greatest miracle” (Rudenko, 2013), which, in
addition to the memoirs of a phenomenal
personality, contains appendices containing
letters, texts of speeches, and speeches by
Rudenko, documents related to the organization
of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, which he
created. In our opinion, the most extensive study
of Mykola Rudenko's poetry is the work of
H. Vivat (Vivat, 2013). H. Vivat analysed
Rudenko's poetry and defined science as a
characteristic characteristic of the poet's lyrics -
‘poesia doctus’ (Vivat, 2013). Other researchers
have focused on a particular aspect of the work,
such as the language issue or elements of
ecocriticism in novels.
Scientific works of L. Vorobiova (Vorobiova,
2019), R. Nakonechnyi, A. Kopytko
(Nakonechnyi, & Kopytko, 2013) made it
possible to study the unique philosophical and
economic concept of Rudenko and to
comprehend the work of other representatives of
the Ukrainian scientific school of physical
economy.
Researcher L. Hryniv and her colleagues focused
on the development of Ukraine's agricultural
sector based on the works of representatives of
the Ukrainian school of physical economy
(Hryniv, & Nazarkevich, 2014).
The scientific research of these and many other
researchers proves the uniqueness of Mykola
Rudenko's work and its relevance in addressing
the global problems of our time.
Unfortunately, it should be noted that the range
of scientific research on M. Rudenko's legacy as
a representative of the Ukrainian scientific
school of physical economy and his scientific
research in the field of cosmology, both during
the times of the ban on the writer's and scientist's
works and now, have been and remain
insufficiently studied and popularised.
Understanding that it is necessary to study
Mykola Rudenko's work comprehensively in
order to reveal the scale of his views, we analysed
the novel “Formula of the Sun”not only from a
literary point of view, but first of all, we revealed
the ideas that the writer tried to convey to the
reader in order to solve the global problems of
our time.
Methodology
Since until now, Mykola Rudenko's novel
‘Formula of the Sun’ has not been the subject of
research in either literary studies or political
science, nor has it been analysed in the context of
global issues of our time, we decided to explore
its role in both the literary and general
civilisational discourse. To achieve the goal of
our study, we used general and special research
methods. General scientific methods of research
(analysis, synthesis, comparison) allow us to
assert that so far there have been no attempts to
study the novel-treatise by N. Rudenko ‘Formula
of the Sun’ as a platform for popularising the
ideas of representatives of the Ukrainian school
of physical economy. The analysis of the
scientific literature has shown that Mykola
Rudenko is indeed a successor of the ideas of
Serhiy Podolynskyі and Volodymyr Vernadskyі
and is a representative of the school of physical
economy. The analysis and synthesis of literary
criticism allows us to assert that the authors
propose a new approach to the study of Mykola
Rudenko's novels - it is necessary to study the
writer's works from the point of view of scientific
hypotheses presented in the novels. Therefore,
the authors have used a systematic approach to
the study of the writer's literary and intellectual
heritage, because this is the only way to
understand the scale of the novel's ideas, since
the work contains a political, economic, social
and environmental structure that must be studied
in unity. The historical-functional method made
it possible to study and predict the place and role
of the writer's heritage in Ukrainian literary
discourse. Since Mykola Rudenko's work covers
almost the entire turbulent twentieth century, it
was necessary to investigate how the writer
became a dissident in the USSR and came to
study political economy and develop ideas of
physical economy, which, in turn, are in harmony
with the ideas of the physiocrats. The historical
and genetic method of research was used to study
the genesis of Rudenko’s works, the prerequisites
for the emergence of his ideas, and fundamental
changes in the perception and interpretation of
the writer’s heritage because of changes in public
consciousness and the study of the place of his
works in the Ukrainian literary process and
science. Therefore, the cultural and historical
method was applied to study the influences of
historicism, biographism and the connection
between Mykola Rudenko's novels and scientific
works and the environment that influenced their
creation. It was found that it was the political
situation in the USSR that led to the worldview
crisis of the already popular Mykola Rudenko
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and led to a reassessment of values in the life of
the famous Ukrainian artist. After 1963, Mykola
Rudenko began to study economics, political
science, and cosmology, which influenced his
work. A detailed study of the reflection of the
writer’s ideas in the field of physical economy in
the novel would have been impossible without
the use of special literary methods and
techniques. The hermeneutic method was used to
understand and interpret the scientific and artistic
heritage of M. Rudenko (in particular, the work
“Energy of Progress” and the novel “Formula of
the Sun”) and was used for a comprehensive
interpretation of the author’s ideas. As we can
see, the novel has a scientific basis in the form of
the author's hypotheses, which need to be
interpreted before reading the novel itself, so that
the motives for writing and the main ideas of the
work are understood. The authors have made a
very brief but necessary presentation of the main
provisions of Mykola Rudenko's scientific works
in order to understand the direction of the study
of the fiction novel ‘Formula of the Sun’, since
the writer in his fiction novel presented serious
scientific ideas that are of interest to researchers
in the third millennium.
Results and discussion
For Mykola Rudenko, exposing the fallacy of
Marx’s theory of surplus value and popularizing
the ideas of the Ukrainian scientific school of
physical economy, defining a national
development strategy was a life mission. Today,
Marx and his doctrine are viewed from different
points of view (Bilyi, 2018). To understand the
man who started out as a poet of the socialist
realism era and came to physical economy as an
antagonistic alternative to Marxist political
economy and began to point out the mistakes of
Karl Marx in an era when the authority of the
German political economist was indisputable, it
is worth taking a quick look at the path that the
Ukrainian writer took.
Thus, the aspiring poet Mykola Rudenko
immediately became popular at the behest of the
Soviet party ideologue Lazar Kaganovych,
Secretary of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union (Shapoval,
2007), when he criticized the nationalism of the
prominent Ukrainian poet Maksym Rylsky:
“instructed by Kahanovych to speak at a meeting
of young writers with a critique of M. Rylsky's
poem “Journey to Youth” (Rudenko, 2013,
p. 237). Rudenko owed his career to the
patronage of the top leadership of the USSR
Communist Party and, of course, fully shared the
party ideology. The Twentieth C.P.S.U.
Congress (14-25 February 1956), where
Nikita Khrushchev’s closed report "On the Cult
of Personality and Its Consequences," marked a
deep turning point in Rudenko’s worldview and,
as a result, in his life. To understand the origins
of the cult of personality, Rudenko studied the
"Capital" (Marx, 1982) and many other works
and found errors in Marx’s theory of surplus
value, which was the basis of the Soviet
economic system. Rudenko’s study of the origins
of party ideology and the principles of economic
development in the USSR led him from Karl
Marx’s “Capital” to Fr. Quesnay “Economic
Table” (Quesnay, 1960) and later to Serhiy
Podolinsky’s “Human labour and its relation to
the distribution of energy” (Podolynskyi, 2000).
Seeing the difference in the approach to the
development of the economy, ecology, the search
for alternative energy sources, and the
understanding of man's place in the world,
Mykola Rudenko came to criticize the Marxist-
Communist ideology and methods of state
administration in the USSR, which resulted in his
being tortured in a psychiatric hospital (a popular
method of combating dissent in the USSR), and
later serving 12 years in prison, and his works
being withdrawn from sale and libraries. As we
can see, Mykola Rudenko came to criticize the
Communist Party and define Ukraine’s role in
global geopolitics when thoughts about the
falsity of the communist course were persecuted,
and there was no demand for an independent
Ukrainian state even in Ukrainian civil society
itself.
Party persecution did not stop the writer. He
continued to work on finding ways to develop
Ukraine and civilization and created works of
fiction in which he first tried to encode his ideas
to avoid communist censorship. After the 1970s,
he began to openly expose the falsity of Marxist
ideology and the crimes of the Communist Party
and called on the Ukrainian nation to begin
defending its rights and freedoms. The result of
the writer’s search and the most important work
of his life was “The Energy of Progress” (1972-
1974) (Rudenko, 2008), which was presented in
1974 at the Moscow apartment of Academician
Andrei Sakharov. Since the author used his
scientific work as a basis for writing the fiction
novel “Formula of the Sun” (Rudenko, 2007), we
consider it necessary to outline the main
differences between the political and physical
economies highlighted in “The Energy of
Progress” so that the motives for writing the
novel, its main ideas, characters, and plot
development can be understood.
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Rudenko began “The Energy of Progress” with a
study of the nature and functions of money and
its impact on the individual and the state as a
whole. Unlike Karl Marx, who saw money as a
means of fulfilling needs, M. Rudenko assigned
money the role of relative value.
Table 1.
The role of money in the interpretation of M. Rudenko and K. Marx
The role of money in M. Rudenko’s “Economic
Monologues”
The role of money
in Marx’s “Capital”
“Money has never been anything but the equivalent of
solar energy flowing through economic arteries”
(Rudenko, 2008, p. 218).
“It functions as a general measure of value, and it is
primarily through this function that gold - this specific
equivalent commodity - becomes money” (Marx, 1982,
p. 52).
Marx and Rudenko also differed in their
understanding of the nature of substance and
matter. The writer interprets substance as the
basis of everything, that is, matter: “Substance is
not matter – it is only a relative state of matter...
matter is the substance of everything that exists
and happens” (Rudenko, 2008, p. 210).
Therefore, he insisted that the concept of “social
substance” was artificially invented by Marx
because such a substance does not exist in nature:
“Since the 'social substance' is not matter, it is
merely a subjective idea of K. Marx” (Marx,
1982, p. 214).
К. Marx explained the “substance of value” as
derived from the “substance of labor”. What, in
M. Rudenko’s opinion, was Marx’s mistake?
First, human labor does not create energy; it is
possible only if a person uses the energy received
from Nature in the form of food. M. Rudenko
argued that the value created by the labor of
millions of industrial workers is relative.
Table 2.
Substance of value according to M. Rudenko and K. Marx
Substance of value according to M. Rudenko
Substance of value according to K. Marx
“Therefore, when we talk about the substance of value,
its definition by labor is not only questionable but also
generally wrong. In this case, we are abusing the term
"substance" - the greatest of all human concepts”
(Rudenko, 2008, р. 215).
“So, use value, or a good, has value only because it
embodies, or materializes, abstractly, human labor.
How can we measure its value? Obviously, by the
amount of labor contained in it, this substance that
creates value” (Marx, 1982, p. 34].
As we can see, M. Rudenko’s and K. Marx’s
interpretation of the concepts of substance,
substance, "social substance" and "substance of
labor", etc. is a clear demonstration of the
fundamental difference between political
economy and physical economy. Having realized
this difference, one can understand why the
Ukrainian writer set out to create “Formula of the
Sun”.
In 1971, Mykola Rudenko submitted a
completely atypical novel-treatise, “Formula of
the Sun”, to the Soviet Writer publishing house.
The creation of “Formula of the Sun” occurred
during the so-called “stagnation” period,
characterized by the flourishing of the
Communist Party’s ideological propaganda,
forced russification, and total control and
censorship of culture and art. For review, the
work was submitted to a Communist Party
activist of the USSR, Doctor of Historical
Sciences, Professor V. Malanchuk and Doctor of
Philosophy, Professor B. Kublanov, who turned
Rudenko into an “enemy of the people”, and the
novel, which was intended to reveal the need for
reforms in the state system, was not censored.
The author explained the reason for writing the
novel-treatise in his memoirs “The life is greatest
miracle”: “The main thing I wanted to express
was Formula of the Sun. This is how I called this
problem, which covered the whole range of
issues related to the origin of surplus value”
(Rudenko, 2013, p. 466). “Formula of the Sun”
was intended to highlight, first of all, the author’s
point of view on the source of absolute surplus
value and to acquaint the reader with the
achievements of the Ukrainian school of physical
economy (in the novel, the author calls the
representatives of physical economy Gnostics),
which influenced the ideological concept and
plot of the work – all the events of the novel
revolve around one theme.
The form of a novel-treatise simplified the plot of
the text as much as possible and made the subtext
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transparent. This form was necessary for Mykola
Rudenko to introduce material that reveals the
achievements of the Ukrainian school of physical
economy and the miscalculations of the political
economy that underpinned the USSR economy.
The text of the treatise, without requiring a
stunning plot to depict the system of events,
made the characters simple and polar, and some
of the events of the work were predictable.
The events of the novel unfold in one simple
storyline, which tells the fate of the scientific
work of retired colonel Vasyl Horin. The story is
told from the perspective of Sofia Horin, the
widow of Vasyl Horin, who finds herself in a
situation quite atypical for a Soviet sanatorium
doctor: after her husband’s death, the
Russian Committee for State Security (CSS) tries
to seize the three copies of the work from her in
order to prevent the ideas of her deceased
husband from being made public. Vasyl Horin’s
manuscripts became a test of resilience and
courage for Sofia and her adopted son Serhii
despite a powerful enemy in the form of a
totalitarian communist state.
As a treatise, “Formula of the Sun” has semantic
blocks, or thematic nodes, where a particular
statement (Mudrak, 2019) is defended or
developed. The author moves from one theme to
another with the help of the novel’s protagonist,
Sofia Horin, who, after losing her husband,
began keeping a diary. When she sat down to
write down her notes, she did not record the
economic state of the country or describe the
state system. On the contrary, she sat down to
write her diaries to organize her life through
introspection. Gradually, the records turned into
a full-fledged genre of documentary, because
Sofia recorded only everything that characterized
the era in which she lived. The description of her
experiences becomes a true portrayal of social
processes, the state system, and the political
system in the USSR. Giving the novel a certain
intimacy, the diary form smooth out the political
acuity of Sofia’s narrative and creates a complete
illusion of the authenticity of the events
described in the novel. Behind Sofia’s biography,
the writer hides the characteristics of the political
system in the USSR at the time of the events of
the novel, which fully falls under the signs of a
totalitarian state and political power: the
presence of a monopolist party that merged with
CSS and the judiciary, the existence of a single
ideology, the blocking of unwanted information
by CSS and law enforcement agencies, state
control over the life of the population, centralized
planning of production and distribution of
material goods, etc. (Bilyi et al., 2018).
After the end of the war, retired colonel Vasyl
Horin spent more than a decade searching for
ways to improve the living conditions of his
countrymen, because although the country was
gradually recovering from the war, the standard
of living was not improving. Horin began to
study the foundations on which the USSR’s
economy was based, realizing that the quality of
life of citizens primarily depended on the state of
the country’s economy. The results of Vasyl’s
research were disappointing. He realized that the
country’s economy was developing in the wrong
direction and that the moment would come when
the USSR, which was huge in terms of territory,
collapsed under the pressure of economic
problems: “There is a time bomb in the
foundation of our state. Believe me, Sonia, it is
capable of causing no less disaster than an atomic
bomb. Sooner or later, it will explode” (Rudenko,
2007, p. 305). Horin realized that, given the size
of the country, the collapse of the USSR’s
economy could have a negative impact on the
entire European continent and on the population
of the enslaved people themselves, who would
find themselves unwillingly on the ruins of a
totalitarian state.
Not fully realizing that the Communist Party was
the center of corruption in the state authorities
and the development of the planned economy,
Vasyl Horin began writing letters to the state
authorities, trying to change the country’s wrong
course: “Vasyl thought that the Party had only
two decades for perestroika” (Rudenko, 2013,
p. 305). As we can see, Vasyl Horin’s thoughts
agree with the position of the author of the novel,
which is highlighted in “The Energy of Progress”
and in some scholarly articles, in particular, in
the study “The Road to Chaos” (Rudenko, 2008).
R. Nakonechnyi and A. Kopytko note that
Rudenko’s thoughts on the prospects for
Gorbachev’s reforms in the USSR, set out in
“The Road to Chaos”, proved prophetic:
“Relying on Marxist theory, which detached man
from the fundamentals of his being, subordinated
him to the interests of production, in the opinion
of this thinker, threatened a bloody future and a
sharp increase in chaos in public life”
(Nakonechnyi, & Kopytko, 2013).
Vasyl Horin called his research on the source of
absolute surplus value the “Formula of the Sun”.
He argued that the generation of absolute surplus
value is accompanied by a strong correlation
between space energy, solar radiation, humus,
and photosynthesis. Although these processes
occur without human intervention, human labor
plays a crucial role in generating absolute surplus
value, just as a catalyst in a chemical reaction.
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Thanks to useful human labor, conditions are
created under which additional biological energy
is generated: “<…> surplus product (and hence
surplus value as its reflection) is born not just
from social labor-in fact, they are born from
nature, and labor only contributes to their birth”
(Rudenko, 2007, p. 344).
Gradually, a struggle unfolded around the
scientific work of an unknown retired colonel,
who was not even an economist by education,
dividing the characters of the novel into two
antagonistic camps: representatives of the
Communist Party (Yevhen Korobov, an
employee of the Kyiv regional Committee of the
Party; Petro Kulyk, Deputy Chief Physician of
the Sanatorium; Yurii Smokovskyi, Third
Secretary of the regional Committee; Later
Secretary of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party of Ukraine; Sofia's first
husband and others) and advocates of physical
economy (Sofia, her son Serhii, uncle Sashko,
daughter of Yurii Smokovskyi Nina, head of the
soil research house Karpo Osadchyi, agronomist
Pavlo Mykhailovych).
If you take a superficial look at the retired
colonel’s discovery, you will not see any
scientific novelty in it. Humanity has been
working on the land for centuries, and today crop
production as a branch of science has been highly
developed. Then why did such a struggle unfold
around Horin’s work that people were ready to
sacrifice their lives for the colonel’s manuscripts,
and the novel The Sun’s Formula was declared
“ideologically hostile” in the USSR?
Given the circumstances and the time when
Horin attempted to make his discovery public,
his work had the effect of a bomb. It was the
second decade after the war (1961), and the
USSR had already seen the results of Marxist
political economy: the dekulakization of the
Ukrainian countryside, the Holodomor of 1932-
1933, forced Russification, degradation of
agricultural production through a haphazard
planned economy, destruction of productivity
growth and economically unjustified mass
political campaigns. During this period, the
country developed its nuclear and missile
capabilities and sent a man into outer space.
Having spent more than a decade studying
complex economic processes, Horin pointed out
the mistake made by Karl Marx, the ideologue of
the only official party and state political and
ideological doctrine, the main pillar and
justification for the power of the CPSU: “Marx
made a mistake in identifying the sources of
surplus value! <…> It is wrong to explain its
origin by the exploitation of labor. Quite the
contrary: exploitation leads to the extinction of
the sources of absolute value – then comes the
famine, social chaos, destruction of the state
foundations” (Rudenko, 2007, p. 305).
Horin disputed Marx’s claim that industry is a
solid foundation for economic development,
insisting that the growth of absolute surplus value
occurs only in the agricultural sector: “Marx
knows something about the factory industry, but
he knows nothing about the deep (i.e. substantial)
nature of agriculture. Here he was mentally
blind” (Rudenko, 2007, p. 345). Thus, Horin
argued that the industrial worker does not create
additional biological energy; he uses it because
without energy there would be no labor as such,
and Marx’s surplus value is a relative surplus
value because the absolute one is obtained only
by farmers: “Now let’s look at the work of the
farmer: by throwing one grain of corn into the
ground, he receives hundreds of new grains that
did not exist in nature before. This is how more
and more new biological energy is born on the
globe, which provides for the work of millions of
people” (Rudenko, 2007, p. 346).
Thus, the watershed between the two economic
theories (political economy and physical
economy) is the different understanding of the
source of absolute surplus value. According to
Marxist political economy, surplus value is
created by the additional labor of the worker,
which the capitalist appropriates, resulting in the
rich from the exploitation of labor. Therefore, it
is necessary to take away the surplus value from
the capitalist and leave it to the proletariat, and to
prevent the capitalist from returning it to himself,
it is necessary to establish the dictatorship of the
proletariat. This understanding of labor and labor
relations caused the totalitarian USSR:
“Nowadays, the apparatus of violence hardly
buys labor anymore – it takes it with terror. It is
profitable for it to create hundreds of thousands
of concentration camps, because labor is
absolutely nothing in them. The carriers of
Marx’s theory have the illusion that in this way
they are bringing the construction of communism
closer.” (Rudenko, 2007, p. 326). A
misunderstanding of the essence of economic
processes contributed to the emergence of a huge
network of concentration camps to obtain almost
free labor from political prisoners, and with it,
the surplus value, which was usually used for
state expenditures. By building the state on
Marx’s political economy, the party aimed to
destroy the peasantry as a class, because
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gradually the peasant was to become a
proletarian: “<…> the reduction of the rural
population is certainly a progressive process.”
(Rudenko, 2007, p. 359). Thus, in his work,
Colonel Horin pointed out and proved that
Marxism is a false doctrine and that it is
impossible to build the state’s economy on a
political economy: “The cornerstone of Marxism
(i.e. Marx's theory of surplus value) he not only
questioned but denied altogether. And he denied
it quite categorically” (Rudenko, 2007, p. 350).
Horin’s most acute point of contention is the
need to develop freedom of enterprise and trade
that work for capital: “This, in fact, is the channel
of nature from which surplus value is born, it can
rightly be called the energy of progress”
(Rudenko, 2007, p. 351). Horin argued that
bonded, planned labor and the unfair distribution
of its results levelled the worker’s motivation to
work, and the village in such a situation generally
declined. If you build up industry at the expense
of the agricultural sector, as was done in the
USSR at an accelerated pace during the five-year
plans, the state will inevitably become poorer.
Horin concluded that the development of the
economy of a land state requires a loving owner
and freedom of capital. This was not the case in
the USSR; instead, there was an imperfect party
regulator that did not see or understand the
principles of economic development behind the
dry targets. Forced collectivization to eliminate
the harmful bourgeois influence of private
property depleted Ukrainian black soil and rural
degradation: “The apparatus of violence takes
away from the peasant the fruits of his labor to
the last grain. Cattle breeding is in decline <…>
This is how the time bomb laid by Marx in the
granite foundations of our state looks like”
(Rudenko, 2007, p. 326).
The study of the sources of absolute surplus
value led Horin to criticize Capital: “As for
Marx, he sinned gravely against the most
important law of the universe – the law of
conservation and transformation of energy. And
for such sins, the Universe punishes mercilessly”
(Rudenko, 2007, p. 510). The appeal to the law
of conservation and transformation of energy,
discovered by the founder of the Ukrainian
School of Physical Economy S. Podolynsky, in
his study “Human Labor and its Relation to the
Distribution of Energy”, introduces a different
view of the development of economy and
civilization from the Marxist view.
The innovation and originality of S.
Podolynsky’s concept is that he was the first
philosopher and economic to analyze the types of
energy on the planet and to point out that
agriculture is tangential to the creation of
absolute surplus value: “At present, we cannot
but recognize that the amount of this energy is
limited and is directly dependent on the vigor of
the vegetation. But we also know that it is
dependent on the amount of human labor applied
to agriculture” (Podolynskyi, 2000, p. 275).
In the “Formula of the Sun”, the writer shows the
origin, formation, and development of the
Ukrainian school of physical economy in a state
dominated by Marxist Communist ideology that
tried to destroy any alternative sciences. In his
memoirs “Life is the Greatest Miracle”, M.
Rudenko recalled that the foundations of
physical economy were the teachings of ancient
Gnostics: “<…> its foundation was gnosis”
(Rudenko, 2013, p. 397), so it is not surprising
that the writer called the characters of the novel
who shared Vasyl Horin’s views Gnostics.
The Gnostics are the bearers of a new approach
to economics, and their ideas are developing in
harmony with the views of the physiocrats,
whose ideologist was Fr. Quesnay and S.
Podolynskyi, the founder of the Ukrainian school
of physical economy: “<…> there was a
rediscovery of the same economic laws. <…> but
Quesnay discovered them from the earth’s side,
and Vasyl discovered them from the sun’s side.
Here a new quality emerges – a link to the
Cosmos, to the natural science of the XXth
century.” (Rudenko, 2007, p. 452).
Synthesis of the ideas of physiocrats,
S. Podolynskyi (Podolynskyi, 2000),
V. Vernadskyi (Vernadskyi, 1989) and other
allows us to look at Ukrainian black soil in a new
way, through the eyes of gnostics, revealing its
value for the development of the state and
civilization: “For our black soils are no longer
just earth minerals. These are, one might say,
cosmic accumulations” (Rudenko, 2007, p. 451).
Therefore, the state of Ukrainian villages and
fertile soils was of particular concern to Vasyl
Horin and the characters who shared his views,
as Ukrainian black soil is a strategic resource for
all mankind and a key to solving global
civilization problems.
The first person to see in practice the negative
results of industrial development at the expense
of the agricultural sector of the economy was
Sofia’s uncle, whom she simply called Uncle
Sashko. This is a collective image of a Ukrainian
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peasant who has concentrated the mental traits of
the Ukrainian nation: a good owner who loves his
land and the work he does on it, who is honest,
principled, and responsible. Uncle Sashko
perceives the Universe through a pantheistic
Christian worldview, which allows the peasant to
combine new approaches to working on the land
with land management, whose traditions are lost
in the depths of time: “There is a great order!
There is an order, brother, that nothing can break.
This is called the laws of nature. Both in Heaven
and on Earth” (Rudenko, 2007, p. 380). Uncle
Sashko’s love for the land could not be
suppressed by planned, almost free, work on the
collective farm. The experienced agrarian was
concerned about the depletion of black soil
because of the implementation of state
procurement plans and consumerist attitudes
towards natural resources. He calculated that if
approaches to farming were not changed, at some
point Nature would refuse to fulfil the ever-
growing needs of the state: “How do we look at
it now? We take what we need from it. Housing,
clothing, food <…> Let’s say we have taken it.
And then?” (Rudenko, 2007, p. 387). Uncle
Sashko saw that the artificially introduced
growth of industry at the expense of the
agricultural sector was destroying the state’s
economy: “Can you imagine a person cutting off
his leg to boil it, well, to satisfy hunger? <…>
And we are doing it, my friend. We destroy
agriculture, and we build factories. And the land,
brother, will not forgive us for this” (Rudenko,
2007, p. 388).
The peasant interpreted the natural and economic
processes he observed while working on the land
with the help of the Bible: “There was Jesus, the
great preacher, whom God really sent to the Earth
<…> And because He saw himself in the bread.”
(Rudenko, 2007, p. 400). The interpretation in
the “Formula of the Sun” of the source of
absolute surplus value through the prism of the
Christian worldview and the figure of Jesus
Christ in particular brings the text of the novel
closer to a treatise as a work of scientific or
religious nature (Kovaliv, 2007, p. 496).
In the mouth of Uncle Sashko, the writer
presented his model of the economy, which he
outlined in detail in “The Energy of Progress”
(Rudenko, 2008). Understanding this model is
the most difficult aspect of the novel. If the reader
understands how Rudenko’s economic model
works, he will also feel the difference in the
interpretation of the sources of absolute surplus
value by Marxists and representatives of the
physical economy, which is the goal of “Formula
of the Sun” (Rudenko, 2007).
Rudenko’s model of the distribution of biological
energy in the agricultural sector of the economy
is reflected in the allegorical 5 loaves of Christ,
which should be divided in equal parts among the
five sectors of the economy to ensure the
economic development of the state: 1/5 of the
income (1 loaf) from the harvest should be left
for the peasant, the same equal parts should be
allocated to the laborer, the votary and the
manager, the fourth part should be directed to the
development of livestock, and the conditional
fifth loaf should be used to restore the black soil.
The writer argued that “this economic model can
easily be raised from the village level to the
national or even global level. Then we will see
three economic spheres: agriculture, industry,
and the state” (Rudenko, 2013, p. 417). Thus, the
agricultural sector of the economy should retain
three parts of the income from harvested crops,
and two parts should be used to meet the needs
of industry and the state apparatus.
Table 3.
Rudenko’s model of harvest distribution
Annual grain harvest
Straw (2/5)
Grain (3/5)
Land
Cattle
Peasant
Industrialists
State and logos
peasant state
According to uncle Sashko, the impoverished
standard of living in the USSR was because the
Communist Party had upset the natural balance
that had been maintained by Ukrainian peasants
for centuries: “Vasyl, do you know what the
worst thing is? The fact that the peasant has
ceased to be the owner of his bread. By this,
brother, we crucified Christ. And we are bitterly
offending the Mother of God – the land does not
receive its share” (Rudenko, 2007, p. 388). Uncle
Sashko also knew the cause of the famine in
Ukrainian villages in 1933: the planned
economy, forced collectivization, lack of
freedom of trade and unbearable state
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procurement plans: “Do you think people in
Ukraine have been dying recently? The devil
took away the Holy Trinity from the people. And
note: with the church” (Rudenko, 2007, p. 381).
All the characters in the novel, without
exception, understand the significance of Vasyl
Horin’s discovery. The attitude towards the
retired colonel’s manuscript differs in the goals
pursued by the characters: the Gnostics, thinking
on a large scale and in the long term, seek to
preserve the work because it develops a model of
alternative state development, while
representatives of the Communist Party and its
satellites are looking for opportunities to destroy
the intelligence because its popularization
threatens to lose power.
Conclusions
According to the author’s intention, the novel
“Formula of the Sun” became a field for anti-
Marxist and anti-Communist discussion and at
the same time a work of fiction. Thus, the main
characteristic of the novel is a scientific
presentation of the author’s ideas wrapped in the
fictional cover of the story of Vasyl Horin’s
discovery. Vasyl Horin’s work is an accurate
reflection of Rudenko’s ideas, which the author
presented in “The Energy of Progress” and his
memoirs “Life is the Greatest Miracle”, and
highlights the disruption of the complex chain of
social and state relations in the USSR, which
eventually made the Union an untenable
totalitarian state. The collapse of the USSR was
predicted in The Sun’s Formula 20 years before
the collapse of the Soviet empire, and this
prediction was based not on the author’s
emotions or desires but on complex and profound
economic calculations. The synthesis of
economics, religion, philosophy, and some
applied sciences gave the fiction novel the
features of a scientific polemical treatise. The
novel focuses on the conflict between
representatives of physical economics, who
argued for state changes based on scientific
research, and supporters of political economy,
who, with the help of corrupt law enforcement
agencies and the CSS, tried to destroy even the
desire to fight for an idea that differed from the
official ideology through intimidation,
harassment, blackmail, and searches. Given the
time of the novel’s writing (the 1970s), it is
necessary to note the author’s extraordinary
courage to prove that Karl Marx’s political
economy was fundamentally flawed in the era of
“stagnation”. The writer argued that the state of
civilization and the planet depends on
humanity’s ability to create a model of the
external world and, on this basis, to develop a
strategy of behavior. The new worldview, based
on the laws of physical economy, will help
people return to the natural and space
environment and solve the acute global problems
of our time. The work of representatives of the
Ukrainian scientific school of physical economy
is, first of all, a prognostic program of action not
only for the Ukrainian people but also for the
entire progressive humanity.
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