The Other Russia

Lecture 13

The National-Bolshevik Party had two documents that were considered the bases of its ideology. This was the “NBP program” published a certain number of times in “Limonka” newspaper and Dugin’s booklet “The goals and the objectives of our revolution”.

Here I have to admit that I, as the party’s chairman, the “NBP program” always was a concession to the public politics, a some kind of shortened, simplified and vulgarized translation to the commoner’s language. A necessary vulgar document but by which the party did not live (well maybe on some points, particularly the objective of modifying the borders and the definition “who is Russian” was absolutely identical to our practical criterion for the selection of the party members) but which it put fort to the public view. To the public however our program seemed horrible and excessively extremist. In my view, meanwhile, the document looked extremely unradical.

First of all, the party and me, basing ourselves on the experience of a few electoral campaigns totally despised the TV-controlled electorate and as a result – the entire system of the allegedly democratic elections. It was clear how after recovering from the fear of 1991-1993 the old bureaucracy quickly learned how to manipulate the elections. Therefore the elected Parliament Chamber looked a bad nonsense (practically it was the keeping of the State Duma) in the NBP program. We were not going to elect anybody. Actually, I included in the NBP program a Chamber of representatives from 900 people, not elected, but appointed by the people of each region – a dozen of the most worthy people of the region. So it became a mix of democracy with a government in Petain’s style, it is in war-time France that there was a Chamber of Representatives. A contribution brought by Dougin: we transferred in our Program the economic model of the Yugoslavian socialism. When a business becomes private if it doesn’t have more than 5 workers; cooperative when there is up to 55 workers, in the hands of the working collective – up to 555; and of the State if there are more than 5555 workers. If I’m not mistaking. All this petty arithmetic is all there in our program and I feel bad for it, I admit, for all this arithmetic.

What concerns the booklet “Goals and objectives of our revolution”, then already after Dugin had left us in April 1998, I carefully read this work and grasped my head. Regardless of the always avant-garde and most fashionable ideological outfits of Alexander Gelievich I discovered in the booklet in no way a revolutionary, but a typical old priest Orthodox worldview, by the author’s fancy tied in a single whole with the concept of “estrangement” borrowed from the existentialist Sartre. Priesthood plus Sartre! It is still our luck that it wasn’t anywhere said that this was NBP ideology. The practical Geliyich proposed the booklet as an ideology of the opposition in general. The work appeared in 1995 and was always considered as supposedly our ideology. The style of this, in the highest extent absurd and old-fashioned booklet makes one assume that Dugin wrote it even before 1993, but apparently he was very eager to nail himself down as an ideologist, so not even having a new project then he just published the old stuff.

In our defense, and my light-mindedness and Dugin’s botching can be presented the fact that NBP ideology in itself was the entire “Limonka” newspaper, particularly its rubric “The Legend”. We expropriated heroes of equally national and red movements of the beginning of the century, successfully interbred Lenin with Hitler, Savinkov with Che Gevara, Mussolini with Makhno and Dzerjinsky, plus we added the esthetic extremism of Pasolini, Mishima, Burroughs, Genet, interbred Bob Denar with members of the RAF and “The Red Brigades”. In a word we assembled in a single successful whole all the heroic enemies of the System. That was new, striking, interesting and most importantly – right, because all these heroic people were destroyed by the stupid, bestial, depressing, boring and dead capitalism. So “Limonka” and mostly its rubric “The Legend” was our ideology. We wanted everything: and to take over Urga with Ungern in Mongolia, and to experience the Beer Hall Putsch with Hitler, and to take Leningrad with Lenin and to fight with Che in Sierra Maestra. Only an idiot could have reproached us the fact that our ideology became the heroic impulse, protest, revolt, revolution! It is the revolution that we needed! We hated the System. And the program, well, program, so what, it’s paper…Hitler did not change his 26 clauses from the time when they were formulated in the early 20s. However at every step he contradicted the clauses of his program. Mussolini changed several times the program of the fascist party. The same did Lenin. The program is not important.

We wrote, naturally, in “Limonka” also what we wanted after our victory. Obviously to have revenge on those who had offended us in those years when we could not get revenge for ourselves. Obviously we wanted to build a new society but our supposedly principal ideologist Dugin limited himself to general festive stirring words. And even me, I started to think about this later. And how will it be concretely: will there still be frozen cities, what types of residences will there be, will there be a family, how will the family of the future be, – we did not write about this or wrote little. The objective of this book, assembled from the lectures intended for NBP members, is precisely to give the outlines of the future. In prison the time for that appeared. While the investigators dig me a hole, I will dig the hole of the investigators’ civilization.

So for what do we have to fight? For what, exactly, society of the future? For what, exactly, program?

I remember that the book of Boris Savenko “Memories of a Terrorist” had a big impression on me. The unforgettable characters of the Poet “Ianek” (Ivan) Kaliayev, Egor Sozonov and even the gloomy provocateur Iavno Azef. And the iron man Savenko himself, at 23 years of age sending his friends fighters-SRs to an heroic death is a remarkable character. He found his own death a quarter century later in the Lubanskaya prison. Egor Sozonov blew up the minister Pleve with a self-made machine for which he was sent to a penal colony for life, Ianek Kaliayev – the Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich and was hanged.

A question suggests itself: “And for what did these supermen exactly fought?” The most significant objective of the socialist-revolutionaries’ party, known even from the textbooks for middle school was the demand for land reform. Subsequently the Bolsheviks armed themselves with this – winning – SR idea (Winning in a country where the majority of the population were peasants!) about the allotment of peasants with land and genially simply formulated it: “The land to the peasants!” And it was intended to return the factories to the workers. “The factories to the workers!” declared the Bolsheviks.

That is, the SRs of the combat organization put in pieces the bodies of the autocracy ministers and the members of tsar’s family so that the peasants get the land. (In other questions there were disagreements between the SRs. There were those who named the aristocracy the avant-garde of the struggle. A few of the SRs called the proletariat their ally.) As for the Bolsheviks, they stuck to their double formula: “The factories to the workers! The land to the peasants!” By the end of the war, having understood how tired the peoples are form the war, Lenin genially added to the slogans a third one: “Peace to the peoples!”

By summarizing all of this we come to the conclusion that the two largest revolutionary parties of Russia of the beginning of the century fought for the removal of the inequality in the distribution of property and means of production, that is the national wealth. What else did they fight for? It was considered that autocracy is a form of government under which the country is ruled by a single ruler, who received the power by inheritance – an extremely reactionary and unmodern form of government.

The masses flowed under the banners of the allies: Bolsheviks and SRs, and not in a feeble quantity. And thanks to the genial triple formula, the Bolsheviks had indeed won. Like this? It appears that it is precisely like this.

And what to fight for today? Today one cannot move anybody with land. There will be no unrests for it. The questions of property of enterprises and land are not revolutionary today, uprising the masses. Why? The workers don’t need factories and plants because to set up a proportional and permanent dripping of profits in the pockets of each of the 12 thousand workers of the Krasnoyarsk aluminum plant is hardly possible or impossible. It is easier to give away a part of the profits to the owners of the plant and the administration, receiving for the possibility of the renting of the equipment, means of production – the machinery and for the labor of aluminum production from the raw materials of the owner – a fixed salary pay. This way it is handier, each worker doesn’t have to busy himself with the plant.

Do the peasants need land today? A very insignificant minority. Those who are not afraid not only of the fight with the land, the soil, but also are not afraid of the war with the papers and the functionaries. Those who agree to get credits for the tractors, to defend themselves from the anger and the envy of the destitute neighbors. And there are insignificantly little of such heroes for the whole Russian peasantry. Even more precisely would be – for the entire Russian population. Because the class of the small agricultural owners had long ago disappeared in Russia, driven out by the forced collectivization. It was forced, yes, but there is no doubt that the method of making agricultural production by branch giants – kolkhozes and state farms – is nevertheless more progressive. In the West it is not the forced collectivization that has abolished single small businesses but the harsh competition. Those specialized on wheat or corn or pigs farming handled the job better than the shabby farmer with three tractors. Therefore the individual property on land that assumes the beginning from zero: giving out by the State of a small piece of land and a couple of tractors – does not appeal to anybody. More precisely it appeals to a very few. In order to reach prosperity the peasant has to break his back for generations and if he doesn’t break it – he will be ruined.

Therefore a similar early, of the beginning of the XX century epoch, socialism today is not a revolutionary ideology, the GOODS offered to him, that for which one should struggle are not GOODS. For them nobody will get his ass off a chair. In Italy of the 70s and the 80s the “Red Brigades” based their ideology on the ideas of the late follower of Gramshi – Pansieri, died in 1964 and the pupil of the latter – Toni Negri, author of the ideas of the “Workers autonomy”. However this very developed Marxism nevertheless was based on the doctrine of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the proletariat revolution as the only way to the arrival of the kingdom of the proletariat dictatorship. The only thing Toni Negri had added from himself was the idea that one should not wait when the political situation will be ripe for the proletariat revolution, that the situation can be accelerated: to artificially heat up the political cauldron with terrorism. Renato Curcio, the leader of the “Red Brigades” also came up with the same conclusion. However, regardless of the fact that for two centuries the “Red Brigades” did not come off from the news columns of the mass-media they did not succeed in heating the Italian society to the temperature of revolution. Meanwhile the “brigadists” came close to the proletariat. There were discussion clubs and seminars functioning, common with the workers of the combinations “Sig-Simmens” and “Fiat”, where the “brigadists” brainwashed the workers. However only dozens of workers went with the “brigadists” and not tens of thousands. The thing is that the proletariat dictatorship (and in its assortment were “Factories to the workers!” and “Land to the peasants!”) turned out to be useless to the proletariat. The proletariat, as it turned out, did not want to burden itself with the problems of ownership on the means of production, problems of production and selling of the products of this production. The workers simply wanted to rent the working place and the machines and to make the product from the raw materials of the boss. And by the evening, not accounting for anything, after the horn, to leave the plants as fast as possible, thanks God, to forget about them till morning! The “Red Brigades” and their ideologists did not watch close enough the world of the end of the XX century surrounding them.

So what happened? Isn’t the degradation of socialism and Marxism as its distinct, most autonomous branch linked to the reorientation of the goals of the “passionary” as it was qualified by Lev Gumilev, individual? “The misfit” as we have called him, the troublemaker, as these kinds of restless people are called by the American tradition? (In my earlier book “The Disciplinary Sanatorium” this type of person is called “the excited one”.) It is precisely a reorientation that happened, it seems. The possession by the working collective of the factory, the land is not attracting? Well it’s even a burden. And the mass person as we know, does not make revolutions by himself. He is drawn into revolutions.

So for what would now the passionary individual, the misfit move from his place, will rebel? What he will fight for? A part of these objectives is already defined in this book.

1. He will fight for the destruction of the family and for a new sexual and social collective – the commune. For a high sexual comfort in life. For two, three and as many as you want hours of affection per day. One should not underestimate the revolutionarism of the striving of man for sexual comfort. It is more important than the right for labor. For sexual comfort his girls went into the family to Manson. And he attached them for years. Sexual comfort rises the quality of life immediately.

2. He will fight for a faster and more substantial life, for the reevaluation of the roles of the ages and their displacement in favor of youth, aged from 14 to 35. He will fight against the dictatorship of the middle age.

3. He will fight against the monstrous school, repressive system, standing hand in hand with the family and the prison. He will work for its elimination.

4. Another important good: social mobility. So that everyone who is now nothing, who enters life at 14, 15 or 20 years old could in a short time become everything. In old, stagnant states all the places are repartitioned, distributed and seized by the families. In literature they have their Mikhalkovs, in cinema their Mikhalkovs, in painting their Konchalovskys. This should not be this way. One needs such a society and State where the talented newcomer has the chance to quickly become everything. Every fate has to be possible. The highest social mobility is observed precisely during revolution. The right to a particular extreme fate is given only by society in the moment of revolution and shortly after it. Precisely for the fate, the possibility to become regiment-commander at 16 years old the passionary individual will move from his place. (As they said during the French Revolution: In each soldier haversack lays a marshal baton”. It has to lay.)

5. The right for war may serve a stirring good for the passionaries may serve. There is an entire category of men who passionately love war. They need war, its feats and even its looting because these things are in man’s nature. For those who have a fighting instinct one has to foresee a right and an opportunity to fight.

6. The societies of modern European and Asian and African countries are oriented on the amassing of prestige and capital by families. On the improvement of quality of life of the family during generations. The misfit always was and will be interested in the elimination of such an absurd order. Heritages should be abolished, everyone would have to begin from zero and not from dad’s capitals. One has to fight for the increasing of the quality of one separately taken human life.

These are only a few basic theses, they are also slogans, they are also objectives, for which will rebel and are rebelling the modern misfits, passionaries of the XXI century.

A part of the objectives is already defined in this book and the objectives received their explanation. It is interesting that not a single of these objectives is economical. Nowhere is capital, plants, factories, means of production discussed and if they are discussed then they are not the important thing. Why did the prestige of economics fall and with it of socialism and Marxism?

The most general answer would be as follows: the transfer of ownership in those or other hands, in one or many is not able to change the principal conditions of life on Earth.