Said Gafurov

Based on the crises of 1998-1999 (Gafurov then was in the Government), 2008-2009 and 2014 - the present, Gafurov elaborated a concept of Mismatch ("Рассогласование") or Disbalance ("Разбалансировка") of Credit-Monetary and Fiscal-Budget policies as the main reason of the ineffectiveness of anti-crisis policy.[2][3] Both the Central Bank[4] and the Ministry of Finance [5] rejected the conclusions of Gafurov based on the absence of such mismatch. However, many meaningful points of Gafurov's concept remained unanswered.[6]

Gafurov is the author of an empirical research monography "Essay on Experience of Comparative Analysis of Privatization and Formation of Corporate Securities Markets in Developing and Post-socialist Countries in 1991-1996" (Moscow State University. Dialog, Moscow, 2000)[7] and works on the theory and practice of the political economy of property.

In 2013 Gafurov started working in the field of reorganisation of international political-economic networks guided by Prof. Alexander Buzgalin. Gafurov regularly spoke at international political-economic Congresses, stressing high-scale social demand for political-economic research from the State and business. In his anti-crisis policy concept, Gafurov followed the Keynesian approach. He created a model of interrelations between credit-monetary and fiscal-budget (and anti-monopoly) policies based on institutional differences between governmental bodies.[8][2]

In the late 90s, in several articles in the journal of Рынок ценных бумаг (Securities market), Gafurov elaborated an original approach to equity research based on the mathematical concept of Ergodic theory. The so-called "Gafurov theorem"[9] states that statistical methods can be used in equity research if only the time series of securities' prices are subject to Ergodicity principles. The practical significance of the theorem is in its first corollary (Gafurov calls it "Lemma") based on the Bayesian approach. When forecasting the market on the basis of the experience gained, the forecast error increases in accordance with the size of the (future, not yet known) changes of the market. This means that, during crises, decisions could not be taken on the basis of the forecast level of market decline, as it is unpredictable in principle. Decisions on market entry and exit must be taken on other principles of portfolio management. The compendium of Gafurov's ideas on equity research and securities analysis was published in the monograph (based on Seria of articles) "The philosophy of Equity research".[10]

In early 2019 the Russian-German Publishing house "Direct-media" published a book by Gafurov "The Cross, the Crescent and the Arab nation: ideological currents in the Middle East,[11] which is a compendium of the basic ideas of Gafurov's orientalism. The introduction to the book is a short review of Gafurov's philosophical and methodological principles. The Russian critic called the book influential but controversial stressing that "Gafurov is trying to break the discourse on Arab countries imposed on Russia from the outside".[12]

Gafurov is an author of a short article on the philosophical ideas of Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi (translated to some European, Arabic and African languages).[13] Its most interesting point is that Gafurov proves that ideas of Gaddafi are similar to those of anarchists.

He is an author of works on the economy, privatization and development of economies, privatization and securities markets of the Arabic, and Asiatic and African countries.

Gafurov also works on the problems of Islamic sects: ismailism, druzes, and alawisms. He, in particular, supposed that all distinctions between flows in Islam (sunnizm and different directions of shiizm) were actually taken to the questions of implementation of law, but not dogmatic or personal reasons, because in an order to be a Muslim it is necessary and enough to make public acceptance of credo of faith, consisting only of two propositions: (1) that there is only one god (tawhid) and (2) that Muhammed is one of his prophets.

He supposed that registration of separate flow is a problem of codification and creation of a separate, independent "mazkhab" a legal school and norms of laws, distinguishing this flow from other directions in Islam.

Gafurov defended the memory of Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah – an assassinated Fatimid caliph who was later claimed insane by Ismailities, Christians and Sunnites, and deified by the Druzes as well as defense of Syrian and Turkish Alawites.

Gafurov is a Russian Marxist thinker. He belongs to the school of the Alexander Buzgalin, who was the supervisor of his Ph.D. thesis. Despite this connection, Gafurov's ideas are close to Marxist positivism and he moved far away from dialectical metaphysics of Buzgalin. Gafurov rejects concepts of the Asiatic mode of production and the State capitalism nature of the Soviet Union (based on analysis of the role of credit relations in the USSR and State Capitalist countries). In local politics, he defends the idea of reconciliation of Stalinist, Trotskyist and Maoist tendencies based on the idea that the differences have only historical significance.[14]

Since the first term of president Putin, Gafurov has elaborated the concept of Russian Bonapartism and the attempts by the bourgeoisie for Liberal Revenge.[15][16]

He champions the quantitative theory of imperialism, which means holds that any stronger imperialism is worse than any weaker one. That contradicts the Leninist defeatist position. Gafurov's position allows tactical alliances with weaker imperialist approaches such as Russian or Iranian imperialism. Gafurov rejects the existence of Chinese imperialism,[17] although he supports Vietnam in its conflict on the Paracel islands while supporting China in all other conflicts in the South China Sea.

Gafurov asserted[18] that the hypocrisy and duplicity of the Anglo-Saxon peoples have deep roots and are associated with the grammar of the English language. Referring to the tradition of St. Augustin, Gafurov stressed that the past is an integral part of current existence. The present is a fleeting moment. A human is his past, no more and no less, and a nation is its history.

However in the grammatical system of the English language the past is clearly divided into at least two varieties - the one related to the present (what in textbooks is referred to as Present Perfect) and the variety that has nothing to do with current existence (Simple Past). The decision on what kind of verb form should be used depends on the speaker. You can link the present to the Chalcedon council, saying "our era", and it is possible to break the integral continuity between what happened fifteen minutes ago to the present (saying "last hour"). This can not help rising to the that kind of duplicity, hypocrisy and the double standards, aimed to cover their own crimes and stress any mistake of others, that any unbiased Asian and Eurasian sees in the Anglo-Saxons.

— Gafurov[19]

Stressing that no nation other than the US has ever used nuclear weapons against cities, Gafurov claimed that the Americans do not understand the hypocrisy of their position on nuclear non-proliferation because, for the nuclear bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima, they use the simple past tense (past indefinite).

Gafurov disapproves of NATO, neocolonialism and neo-racism, and is sharply critical of current European Union policy in Africa and in Europe.

The heartless machine of German and French capital constantly needs the process of EU expansion. When expanding the European Union, the German-French capital destroys productions on newly acquired territories and captures new markets at the same time. At first, Germany and France (as well as small countries of the "old" EU) destroyed production in Southern Europe. Spain still has Seat and Italy has Fiat, but there is practically no machine-building in these countries, nor are there shipyards in Greece). Afterwards, having seized and digested the economy and production sector of those countries, the German capital turned to Eastern Europe and the Baltic States. The EU needs to constantly expand by destroying productions in new territories and conquering new markets. Otherwise, the EU will simply disappear in competition with Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Indian, and even Russian and American producers. The European competition will not be able to stand fair competition. Ukraine is the most recent victim of the German-French capital. The German capital has not been able to fully digest it yet, but the destruction of the Ukrainian national economy is only a matter of time, and the capital will need to expand further. Turkey seems to be next on the line. It is important to understand here that capital is not malevolent or insidious. It destroys the Ukrainian economy not because Germany wants the Ukrainians to live worse and worse. On the contrary, German masters of life want the Ukrainian "Untermenschen" to live well under the German "Ordnung", gradually turning them into law-abiding and obedient Europeans... Simply put, capital is indifferent to everything except its profit. It needs to capture new markets and destroy their production.[20]

— Said Gafurov

Gafurov is one of leaders of the Russian Social Forum movement.[21] Gafurov participated in writing program documents about the Russian Movement in defense of Labour (which was sharply criticised for its position in support of Putin in his struggle against the restoration of neo-liberalism). In 2017 Gafurov was one of the key organizers of the World Festival of Youth and Students in Sochi, Russia. He made at least 11 speeches during the Festival.

In October 2020, Gafurov was the first on Russian TV to proclaim internationalism as the only possible basis for achieving an Armenian-Azerbaijani settlement.[22] This position met with fierce criticism from both Armenian and Azerbaijani nationalists.

In 2016 -2017 he formulated the so-called "Gafurov postulate" of political science on Russian TV. According to this hypothesis, in any election "from the United States to the DPRK, from India to Russia, from Switzerland to the People's China, from Germany to Syria," the number of illegal, "thrown in" votes is approximately the same, in cases of one or two candidates ranging from 5% to 10% of votes. Gafurov assumes the existence of a stable mathematical expectation of this figure in the presence of a sufficiently large number of polling stations and a large number of elections. "Gafurov's Political Science Hypothesis" is used to calculate the budgets of election campaigns in Russia.

Gafurov had struggled to support the Syrian government, but after direct involvement of Russian forces in the Syrian conflict, he started to speak against the main line of Russian propaganda. Nevertheless, his views are accepted by the Kremlin.

Since 2011 Gafurov has actively supported the Syrian government in the Russian media, including Russian media in foreign languages.[23] Gafurov was a Deputy Chairman of the Russian Committee for Solidarity with Peoples of Libya and Syria since its founding. Gafurov defended the Syrian government during the uprising in Deraa pointing out that it was a struggle for arable land between the Druzes and Bedouins.[24]

Gafurov created an idea that in order to settle the Syrian crisis the Russian Foreign Policy should get a support from the United States Catholic lobby.[25]

In 2011 during the popular uprising in Libya, Gafurov became one of the most prominent Gaddafi supporters in Russia, though Gafurov claimed that he did not take sides, stating: "Any barricade has only two sides. And if there are your enemies on both it simply means that this is not your barricade".

However, in practice Gafurov's articles defended Kaddafi's side based on

• the thesis that the uprising is a tribal reaction to Gaddafi's attempts to modernise Libya;[26][27][28][29][30]
• the fact that the insurgents were led by former Minister of Justice in the Gaddafi's government;
• the economic interests of Russia's oil and gas sector.[31]

Gafourov's article that Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was cheated by US Vice-President Joe Biden who promised to send US Defense Secretary Robert Gates to Russia before implementation of the United Nations Security Council Resolution 1973 which caused a large controversy in Russian political circles and was followed by the public exchange of opinions between Russian President Medvedev and Prime-Minister Putin.

In February 2014 Gafurov declared what he considered should be the principles of Ukrainian settlement:

• Down with the fascist self-proclaimed government in Kiev and its IMF-inspired economiс program
• No annexation of Crimea by Russia
• Federalisation of Ukraine so that the regions of Ukraine have the right to self-determination to choose between (a) Euro-integration (b) free-trade zone with the Customs Union of Russia, Kazakhstan and Belarus (c) independence from both.

Later on Gafurov changed his position on Crimea based on the fact that the economic politics of the Ukrainian oligarchy putschists since the 2014 coup d'état had destroyed the economy of the Ukraine; and that the Crimean people (including the Crimean Tatars) would not agree to return to the misery and poverty of the post-democratic dictatorship of the Ukraine regardless of a heartless but rich Russian Bureaucracy regime.

In February 2017, Gafurov in his political TV-show on the Pravda.ru channel[32] publicly promised that he would start a campaign to return Crimea to the Ukraine the day after the USA returned Texas, California, New Mexico and Arizona to Mexico.[33]

Of course the Americans could not be that hypocritical to demand returning Crimea to the Ukraine without returning Texas to Mexico. I believe that they are gentlemen.

— Gafurov[33]

Because of his public statements[34] Gafurov is suspected to be one of the organisers of a secret channel to transfer refugees - mainly members of the Communist party of the Ukraine, "Borotba" and other leftist organisations, who were persecuted and tortured at Maidan and some other regions in the Ukraine - to Russia.

In 2016 Gafurov twice spoke at the Congresses of the POLISARIO in Algeria as a guest.

Gafurov supported Côte d'Ivoire President Laurent Gbagbo against another Côte d'Ivoire President Alassane Ouattara.[35]

In the fall of 2020, the St. Petersburg publishing house "Peter" published the controversial book "Combat Ecology" (ISBN 978-5-4461-1723-9) [36] by Said Gafurov and Daria Mitina, which met with fierce criticism.

Gafurov is an open though careful opponent of the concept of Intellectual property. He states: "Letters are everyone's property" ("Буквы принадлежат всем!"). He argues his position by the common good and by the fact that anyhow the state and philanthropists sponsor most of the modern culture. It puts Gafurov in rather anecdotical and hypocritical position when he invites to his TV-shows Russian scenario play-writers or Russian composers (including the Chairman of the Russian Composers Union Andrey Baturin[37]) involved in copyright disputes. He was one of the first Russian scholars who published his Ph.D. dissertation on the internet as early as in 1996.[38] This led to his involvement in some Russian Dissernet scandals as a source of violated copyright.[39] In 2010-ies Gafurov was several times accused by his opponents in Plagiarism by publishing under his name short news articles from Greek, Indian and Bengali radical Marxist sources (which if not signed by Gafurov would have unlikely been published by Russian mainstream media).