The Russian challenge and the year 2000

AS, No. 1013, pp. 26-7.

Ibid., No. 1020, p. 18.

(bid., No. 1013, p. 22.

Ibid., p. 23.

Ibid., No. 1108, p. 37.

Ibid., No. 1013, p. 19.

Ibid., No. 1.108, p. 38.

Ibid., No. 1140, p. 168. Emphasis addea

Ibid., No. 1013, p. 15.

Ibid., No. 1020, p. 32.

Vol'nue slovo, No. 9-10, p. 184.

Ibid., p. 190. It would be possible to extract from a number of other readers' letters quotes ranging from simple informal юп ('Dear Sir: I want to call the attention of the readers of your journal to the Catholic danger in Russia, which has been growing as the contemporary elements of cosmopolitanism more and more seduce the consciousness of the Russian Orthodox people' (AS, No. 1140, p. 166)) to something like a philosophical tract ('The theory of a state based on the rule of law is by its origins exclusively pro-Western . . . The essence of the theory is in the separation and opposition of legislative and executive authority, which, in the opinion of theorists, leads to the democratization of the state. In practice such a separation results not in democratization, but instability . . . [and] perfect nonsense . . . Such a dialectic is not in the spirit of traditional Russian jurisprudence . . . [which favours] the concentral on in one state organ of both the legislative and executive functions' (AS, No. 1108, pp. 157 — 8)) to romantic reminiscences ('"For the faith, the tsar and the fatherland!" . . . this cry was the most sacred and most selfless. With it they died and hoped to receive the Kingdom of God . . . Remember the last war? "For the Motherland, for Stalin — forward!" And that too was sacred' (AS, No. 1013, p. 49)) and finally solemn prophecy ('It approacheth, the Pax Russica is already at the doors!' (AS, No. 1230, p. 159)). But the general tone and direction of Veche's reader mail did not, as we see, vary very much.

Vol'noe slovo, No. 17—18, p. 3.

59 Vestnik RKhD, No. 106, p. 295.

oO Novyi zhurnul, No. 118. 1975, p. 227

61 Ibid , p. 220. Capital letters are the author s throughout

o2 Ibid p. 221.

t>3 Ibid.

64 Ibid. p. 223.

o5 Ibid , p 222.

66 Ibid., p. 227.

o7 Ibid., p. 224,

68 ??

b9 Ibid , pp. 221-2.

Ibid... pp 223-4.

Ibid , p. 202-3.

Ibid... p. 202.

'Petition to the Regional Synod, 1971', signed by the Priest G, Petukhov, che Archdeacon Varsonofii Khaibulin and the layman Fomin

Survey, No. 1, 1973.

Vol'noe slovo, No. 17-18, p. 166.

AS, No. 1108, p. b3.

Ibid., p. 64.

Ibid

Ibid p. 64.

Ibid , pp. 63-4.

Ibid, p. 64.

Documentary confirmation of this is provided by Osipov's declaration. 'Having in the past been an active oppositionist, 1 have now abandoned political confrontation with the regime, at the same time hoping that the regime will not destroy пае for my activity in the interest of national culture' (Vestnik RKhD No. 106, p. 295).

12

Enter Fascism: The Nation Speaks

The Deficiencies of "Our Wise Men "

While Veche was agonizing under pressure from its own readership's 'patriotic' passions, Slovo Natsii [The Naaon Speaks], a 'Russian patriots' manifesto',¹ appeared in the san> zdat to sum up the mood of the 'patriotic masses' in the late 1960s and early '70s.

This manifesto not only attacked Osipov's liberal sympathies, but also ridiculed the theoretical basis of VSKhSON's programme. The anonymous 'Russian patriots' who were the signatories saw both as merely 'theatrical thunder and lightning addressed to the bureaucratic elite'.² The manifesto goes on:

You say this elite neither represents the people nor any class of society, it represents only itself. But hold on there! Such thoughts have already been expressed at one time by someone who, admittedly, was not one of the best minds — P. N. Tkachev. This discovery worthy of Copernicus, that the Russian government supposedly hangs in the air and is supported by nothing but itself, by rights belongs to him. In his time, Engels justifiedly mocked this discovery, but perhaps now the situation has changed and what was untrue has become true? Alas, this has not happened. As before, in the reasoning of our wise men there are glaring deficiencies.³

The reader, who is already familiar with the VSKhSON programme will, of course, know which 'wise men' are being referred to. When we read further that, 'Democratic institutions do not carry with them the cure, but more likely the opposite, they aggravate the illness',⁴ and compare this with Veche's reader mail, we are forced to ask ourselves, Isn't the time of the ideologists of the VSKhSON and Osipov va cty — and, indeed, of imperial liberalism in twentieth-century Russia well and truly past? In reality, the 'patriotic masses consistently supported the heathens' over 'our w ise men

On tne Path to Worldwide Disintegration

The main threat,' the manifesto said, 'as yet understood by hardly anyone, remains a general one: degeneration, caused by biological factors that act faster the less attention is paid to them, is persistently eating away at the threadbare pseudo-truth about the primacy of so- called social factors over biological ones.'⁵ Moreover, Democracy, in its egalitarian form, is one of the consequences of degeneration and at the same time its stimulus.'⁶ Spineless Western democracy has brought misfortune to the world It has let the genie out of the bottle: the yellow and black races, whose liberation from colonial dependence 'indicates only the degeneration of once mighty peoples',⁷ are threatening to engulf Aryan civilization. 'If we don't take timely measures,' the manifesto warns, 'we could live to see the day when we will become mere pawns or, at best, passive observers in the battle between the black and yellow races for world supremacy. ⁸ 'Somewhere on the path to worldwide disintegration a rampart will finally have to be erected ⁹

There is no point in arguing over what people should believe m The only thing which the reader might demand of these Russian patriots', as they try to articulate the darkest fears of then" readership, is that they be true to their own postulates and try to maintain some logical consistency between their assumptions and conclusions Where and how could this 'rampart' against 'worldwide disintegration' be erectcd? Where will the news of salvation come from? Not from Europe. 'The European peoples' life-forces are failing them.'¹⁰ France and Germany, we are told, are "today squeezed between two super-giants, whose very names are for some reason encoded'.¹¹ Even without a key to the code, we know immediately who the super-giants are. One of them, the USA, is obviously completely unsuited to the role of building a saving rampart:

The representatives [of the Thud World ] sprinkled throughout American society plan pogroms ['pogroms' here means 'riots'] and acts of arson, they seize the platform which has been obligingly set up for them by 'iberals and firmly direct their efforts toward becoming the dominant class in America. When the Anglo-Saxons finally lose all sense of national pride and sink into the liberal slime, the whole enormous industrial potential of the USA could be transformed into a tool of the black race for achieving world supremacy.¹²

Compare this with the tirade in the letter to Veche cited earlier, in which Europe is declared 'an incorrigible harlot' and America 'her final, mad, nocturnal orgy' which can only end in death'. There can be no doubt who these 'Russian patriots' are speaking for in their manifesto.

So if Europe and America are hopeless what resources does Aryan civilization have left to defend tself against new barba lan icursions? Why — Russia, naturally.

Thus, by a circt tous route — \ .a crude racist speculation — these Russian patriots' return to their native soil and to the same theme that prophets of imperial nationalism, from the early Slavoph es to VSKhSON whom they despise, have never stopped repeating for a century and a half: Russia as the world's saviour. Is it not surprising that, however Russian nationalists have chosen to formulate the mortal threat to our poor world over the past 150 years, has somehow always been 'the West's life forces [that] are failing it', while Russia has these in such abundance that she is prepared to save it? Regardless of whether this threat came from 'unbelief' or 'parliament­arism', 'shopkeeper mentality' or 'Americanization of the spirit', 'the metaphysical essence of Communism' or, finally, 'biological degener­ation', the sole hope for the world has invariably been focused on Russia.

Fortunately for the Russian nationalists, no one in the West has so far catalogued that long and ancient list of 'mortal threats', varying over the course of centuries, from which Russia was destined to save the world but never did. Why has no one ever posed this devastating question to the Russian nationalists? Yet, even if someone had said to them the obvious 'Physician, heal thyself!', it would scarcely have cured them of their parochial messianism. Dialogue, as we have seen, is something alien to them in principle. They believe only n monologue. For centuries they have listened only to themselves. Yet such a catalogue would at least show their good-hearted Western fellow- travellers what a precarious position they place themselves in by supporting this mess an^;c fervour.

But that is an aside. Certainly, the 'Russ < n patriots' who s gned The Nation Speaks, for all their biological and racial pretensions, remain within the mainstream of Russian extremist nationalist thought, with its provincial messianism, its faith in the unique salvation qualities of Russia and its slavish justification of the empire. Our slogan', they proclaim, 'is a United Indivisible Russia.'¹³

Hitler s Mistake

Yet here arises a logical contradiction n their racial concept They are well aware that they are not pioneers in the business of saving Aryan civilization, That title must undoubtedly belong to Hitler. But Hitler, like the Russian 'patriots of the civil war from whom they borrowed the slogan 'A United Indivisible Russia', suffered a resounaing defeat. They cannot forget that they are the ideological heirs of failure. It is therefore imperative for them to find a rationalization for this failure — and they do.

These 'Russian patriots' portray Hitler's defeat as having been brought about by his betrayal of the righteous principle of race war. It is true that, 'he declared a merciless war on degeneration But he was in no pos .tion to complete this task because he was by no means ruled by the racial principles he proclaimed, but rather by a narrow nationalistic egotism. He even declared as inferior, peoples on the same level as the Germans '¹⁴ However, if Hitler s main mistake, from the point of view of 'Russian patriots', was that he substituted nationalist piinciples for racial ones, then, above all, they should have tried to avoid doing the same thing themselves Alas, as for Hitler, in the final analysis the salvation of the world is reduced to the creation of a powerful national state to serve as the centre of gravitational attraction for the healthy elements of all fraternal (sic!) countries'.¹⁵ At the same time, m this state the Russian people . must necessarily become the dominant nauon.'¹⁶ In other words like Hitler, the Russian racists turn out to be merely nationalists.

Russian Orthodox Heathens'

he logical problems ^;n the 'Russian patriots', racial conception are compounded by their attitude toward Orthodoxy. As the national religion, Orthodoxy (not just Christianity) is declared by them to be indispensable to the Russian empire and thus to saving the world. 'Throughout Russian history, the Orthodox church has played an enormous positive role . . . the savage anti-clerical orgy [of the 1420s] was part of a campaign by the forces of chaos against Russian national culture. In a national state, the foundation of which we place as our goal, traditional Russian Religion must take its proper honoured place.'¹⁷

Statements such as these confuse the issue for Russian nationalism's Western fellow-travellers. How, one asks, should the authors of The Nation Speaks be categorized? Should they be wr :ten off as 'reactionary racists', or National Bolsheviks as Darrell Hammer prefers to call them?¹⁸ If so, how can we square this whh Dunlop's classification system according to which their very attachment to Russian Orthodoxy makes them good national its, quite distinct from the repulsive National Bolsheviks? As we have seen, 'Russian patriots' are far from being atheists or pagans. They are believers in the Russian Orthodox church. Moreover, Orthodoxy is, for them, not just ihe highly esteemed traditional Russian Religion (with a capital R), but the only branch of Christianity capable of saving the world. Christianity's other branches have betrayed the racial principle and. are in essence aiding 'worldwide disintegration':

Today the spirit of evil, having disguised its horns under a Beatles haircut, is trying to conduct its demoralizing and Disintegrative activity within individual branches of the Christian Church by other means, preaching the ideology of the Jewish diaspora, egalitarianism, and cosmopolitanism, thus aggravating the process of worldwide miscegen­ation and degradation ¹⁹

One has only to compare this passage with 'The Letter of the Three', published in Veche and signed by a priest and an Archdeacon of the Russian Orthodox church, to be convinced of the source of the Russian patriots' manifesto, Nasha Strana ['Our Country'] — a thoroughly Russian Orthodox newspaper with a Black Hundreds mentality — published The Nation Speaks for the first time in Russian outside the Soviet Union, calling it 'the beginning of a spiritual awakening' in Russia.²⁰ There can be no doubt, therefore, that the authors of The Nation Speaks were 'good Russian nationalists', vozrozhdentsy, in Dunlop's terminology — only at the same time they are also racists and, even worse, followers of Adolph Hitler. Not surprisingly, their Western fellow-travellers cannot explain th s paradox. To them, it remains a theoretical problem with no solution. But there are other paradoxes and sources of confusion within the thinking of the 'Russian patriots'.

A Few Words about National Uniqueness

The struggle for national uniqueness is part of the great battle between the forces of life and death n the universe. ²¹ Oddly enough, however, the Russian patriots' are concerned with ]ust one type of national uniqueness in the context of Russia — imperial. They become cynical and bitter as soon as the discussion turns to the national uniqueness of other peoples witl n the empire. It disturbs them that for some reason the existence of the Belorussian nation is artificially supported, though the Belorussians have no sense of themselves as such, and the Belorussian language is merely a collection of western Russian dialects.'²² They are honestly offended by the fact that, 'all the so-called union republics have their own Communist parties except Russia. The result is a disproportionate strengthen ng of the most powerful of the regional groupings — the Ukraine.'²³

Two peoples provoke the greatest displeasure among 'Russian patriots': the Ukrainians and (who else?) the Jews One would think that these peoples' active struggle to assert their own national uniqueness, it ought to place them on the 'correct' side of the barricades in the 'great battle between the forces of life and death in the universe'. Yet, the conclusions of the 'Russian patriots' in this regard, once again, do not follow from their own assumptions. They consider that 'entire provinces of the Ukraine by righis ought to be part of Russia', and complain of 'such crying injustices as the transfer to the Ukraine of the Crimea, where a predom nantly Russian population is now forced to study Ukrainian'.²⁴ As for the Crimean Tartars, whom Stalin drove from their historic homeland, their national uniqueness is of so little concern to the 'Russian patriots' that they do not even receive a mention ;n their manifesto. Yet this is hardly surprising when we consider their views on the possible independence of even so powerful a nation as the Ukrainians.

If the separate existence of the Ukraine really became an issue, its borders would inevitably need to be re-examined. The Ukraine would have to cede to Russia: a) the Crimea, Ы the provinces of Kharkov, Donets, f.ugansk, and Zaporozb'e with their predominantly Russian populations, and c) the provinces of Odessa, Nikolaev, Kherson, Dnepropetrovsk and Sumy, whose populations are to a sufficient degree (sic¹) Russified . . . What would remain to the Ukrainians, having no access to the sea and no basic industry, let them figure that out for themselves. Let them also consider the [territorial] claims that might be made by the Poles in the western provinces [of the Ukraine] whose populations are pro-Polish.²⁵

The national uniqueness of the Moldavian people is declared to be 'laughable',²⁶ 'patriots' see fit to talk about it only in connection with :oreign appetites for our territory'²⁷ (Rumanian, in this case). Just as allegor. jally, they refer to the right of Russia to put down rebellions in her eastern European empire (having in mind the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968):

0

Those who imagine they understand things, would wish to bridle our statesmen with their understanding. 'Hands Off!', they cry out in the event of any kind of often necessary intervention in the affairs of other countries. They are like a wife who, hearing a cry for help from the street, flings herself upon her husband and doesn't let him go out [to help] . . . What s the value of that kind of understanding? What is it that disi ngi ishes an ideological liberal from a plain philistine? The courage of a deserter?²⁸

I hope the reader recalls the formula of the Russian nationalists that became standard in their discourse after V. Mikhailov used it in his book New Judea. 'The Jewish yoke over the Russian folk,' wrote Mikhailov, 'is an established fact which can be denied only by either complete cret is or scoundrels who are completely indifferent to the Russian nation, her past and the fate of the Russian people.' In full accordance with this tradition of nationalist Russia, The Nation Speaks declares any struggle against the empire as 'either resulting from an inat lily to think things out or an insidious ploy by those who would seek worldwide demoralization and disintegration '²⁹

Once the conversation has turned to 'worldwide demoralization and disintegration', the Jews are inevitably next in the line of fire. Unlike V. Mikhailov, The Nation Speaks does not openly refer to a 'Jewish yoke over the Russian people'. After all, it was written half a century later. Nevertheless, being resourceful, the 'Russian patriots' manage to work it in somehow. Despite their contemptuous treatment of the Belorussians, Ukrainians, Moldavians and Czechs, still their most vicious lines were reserved — as befits any self-respecting followers of F-Nationalism — for the Jews:

Lots of noise is made about anti-semitism in Russia. The Jews pose as a national minority oppressed by the Russians while at the same time conducting a policy of ethnic favouritism. They have virtually monopolized the fields of science and culture. The Russian soil has not yet tost its capacity to give birth to Lomonosovs, but today their path is blocked by the next Germans in tine,[4] while the poor pnveleged' Russians meekly skulk otf to the side And God forbid they should be offended¹³⁰

The manifesto's conclusion is also referring to Jews when it says, When we speak about the Russian people, we mean people who are genuinely Russian in blood and in spirit. We must put an end to disorderly hybridization.'³¹

To The Nation Speaks, Jews in Russia play the same role as the 'representatives [of the Third World] sprinkled throughout Amer.can society' do in the USA. They 'seize the platform which the liberals have obligingly set up for them and firmly direct their efforts toward becoming the dominant class.

The New Russian Revolutionaries

VSKhSON and Veche considered imperial treatment of national minorities unseemly, as can be judged from point 83 of VSKhSON's programme or Veche s critique of Danilevskii's imperial theories. For all L-Nationaiism's contradictions, its adherents' critique nevertheless contained an element of protest against the unceremonious oppression of lesser nations. The 'Russian patriots', worried about 'biological degeneration' and 'worldwide miscegenation', openly denounced this protest as 'the courage of deserters

From their manifesto we can clearly see how hopeless liberal Nationalism's case had become by the early 1470s. It was the still­born product of high-brow intellectuals who were trying to reconcile the savage yearning of the 'patriotic masses' for pogroms with their own refined political schemata. Their audience had no need of such schemata. They thirsted, not for a 'revolution of national liberation but rather for a new — massive and decisive — campaign against 'cosmopolitanism', overt suppression of national minorities and isolation from foreign 'Zionism and Satanism'. The 'patriotic masses' harboured a longing for dictatorship, for the iron hand that would put a stop to 'disorderly hybridization'. They found the genuine expression of their aspirations in The Nation Speaks, not in the equivocal Veche or the anti-Soviet VSKhSON. These 'patriotic masses', as Veche s readers indicated, are Soviet through and through, only they are the people of Soviet dictatorship, not rotten Soviet conservatism. They were opposed not to the Soviet system, but to the corrupt Brezhnev regime. In tl s sense only, are they revolutionaries.

The Dictatorship's Ideological Reorientation

'Revolut m is a transitional state', say the 'Russian patriots'. 'In mathematics such a state is denoted by zero and has neither a positive nor a negative sign'. ... In history, such 'eruptions of the people's vibrant energy are natural phenomena . . . They accompany, as a rule, the periods of the nation's greatest vitality. If in some small portion of the contemporary world, taken by some to represent the whole world, we do not see such explos ans, this indicates that that particular portion of the world has passed its peak period and is headed towards decFne.'³² In the West, we are told, 'the stormy currents of revolution . . flow nto stagnant pools of the shopkeeper mentality'. If, however, Russia manages to avoid such a fate, and 'we have every instinct to do so',³³ all our sacril ces shall be rewarded.

Of course, the revolution of the 'Russian patriots' is far removed from VSKhSON's anti-Communist 'revolution of national liberation', 'hey have no need of 'an underground army of liberation which will topple the dictatorship' Their revolution is not against dictatorship, but for it: 'such a feat is only within the strength of a dictatorship';³⁴ 'there can be no talk of either the convergence or the ideological capitulation of Russia.'³⁵ 'Therefore what is important for us is . . . the dictatorship's ideolog :al reorientation, a kind of ideological revolution in its own way . . . We are striving for a rebirth of the sense of nationality in a confused world, in order that each is aware of his personal responsibility to his nation and to his race.'³⁶

Thus, the 'Russian patriots', capturing the exact mood of the patriotic masses', rejected the sham patriotism of the Brezhnev regime (as did the Young Guards, at the same time, speaking in the name of 'patriotic youth'). However, in contrast to Chalmaev and Lobanov, who had to work within the confines of state censorship, the authors of The Nation Speaks were able to articulate much more openly the sinister Black Hundreds mentality and the yearning of the 'patriotic masses' for Fascism.

Summary of The Nation Speans

The centre of gravity in the battle between Good and Evil is transferred from the metaphysical heights ot L-Nationalism to the totally earthly realm of the biological degeneration of human­kind. Its doctrinal thrust is directed at the struggle against non- Russians and 'disorderly hybridization' which threatens to undermine the position of Russians as the dominant nation (and race) within the empire.

Maintaining the empire is declared not only the sacred duty of Russian patriots' but also the main means of saving civilization from 'worldwide disintegration

Dictatorship is represented as the sole institutional structure adequate to this task.

The main goal of 'Russian patriots' is therefore the reorientation of the dictatorship' along the lines of a nationalist and racist 'ideological revolution', i.e , the creation of a Fascist state.

Notes

This is how the emigre Veche described The Nanon Speaks, No. 3, 1981, p. 107

Ibid , p. 115.

Ibid.

Ibid,, p. 130.

Ibid , p. 107.

Ibid., p. 108

Ibid p 113.

Ibid., p. 130.

Ibid., p. 126.

Ibid., p. 113.

Ibid., p. 117.

Ibid., p. 113.

Ibid, p. 125.

Ibid., p. 110.

Ibid., p 130.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 129. Capitalized in the original

Darrell P. Hammer 'Russian Nationalism and the "Yanov Thesis'", Religion in Communist Lands, Winter 1982, p. 313.

Veche, No. 3, 1981, p. 128.

Nasha strana 18 April 1972.

Veche, No. 3, 1981, p. 116.

Ibid., p. 123.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 124.

Ibid. Emphasis added.

Ibid.

Ibid

Ibid., p. 118. Emphasis added.

Ibid., p. 114. 3D Ibid., p. 125.

Ibid., p. 131.

Ibid., p. 112.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 111.

Ibid., p. 129.

Ibid., p. 130.

13

Solzhenitsyn:

From Under the Rubble

1 am keenly aware that in touching on the subject of Solzhenitsyn in the context of the drama of the Russian Right, I touch upon an extremely subtle, intimate, and at the same fme immense subject First of all, Solzhenitsyn is not an Osipov or a Chalmaev, nor an anonymous 'Russian patriot': he is part and parcel of political reality in the West. Hundreds of articles and dozens of books have been written about him. More importantly, many people in the West as well as in the Soviet Union are bound to him by personal feelings - they have studied him, learned from him, been inspired by him, loved him, expected the ultimate truth about Russia from him, as well as been disappointed in him. I do not intend to draw a political portrait of Solzhenitsyn here — or even a sketch for such a portrait. My aim is very much more modest- to examine the intellectual contribution of Solzhenitsyn and his followers to the formation of the reborn Russian Idea.

But to attempt even this is rather painful for me, as someone who was raised on Russian culture and shared in everything good and bad it has given the world. For myself as for many in Russia. Solzhenitsyn was once the conscience of the nation. For us, Sol/henitsvn was a symbol of those things of which we ourselves were not capable. This is not only with reference to his artistic gifts and legendary courage, but also to the role he has played л the spiritual liberation of oui country, and therefore also in my own liberation. The tragic aspect of the phenomenon of Solzhenitsyn is that he has turned up in the ranks of the New Right. But besides observing that this in itself is an indication of the enormous power which the light-wing tradition exerts in Russian culture, I am askmg, Why? Why would a person who has done so much for me, afterwards betray me? And not only betray rne, but damn me as a part of the Russian intelligentsia he curses?¹

For this reason the chapters of this book on Solzhenitsyn are written as an argument, a confession, a search for an answer to a question which has been fateful for me — in short, as a critique of Solzhenitsyn's crii que. This is a difficult role for me, but I cannot refuse it — if for no other reason than that Solzhenitsyn himself taught me this unyielding attitude. After all, he himself wrote his Letter to the Soviet Leaders with almost no hope of success. Can he now abandon hu own ideology? If he made such demands of the leaders of the USSR, he must be capable of facing them himself.

Morality and Politics

What are the methodological roots of Solzhenitsyn's position? There are many. However, we are interested here in only one, which trad mally pertains to Russian writers who, just as traditionally, appear n the role of political prophets. Gogol, Dostoevskii and Tolstoy — however different their doctrines — have all proceeded from a single postulate. They measured political reality by absolute moral ciiter.-i, found reality wanting and — without even noticing how easy and fruitless the victory was — drew the conclusion that, from the point of view of the Lord's commandments and the moral perfection of man, there was essentially no difference between authoritarianism and democracy.

In much the same way as the thinkers of the French Enlightenment held that religion was a huge fraud lasting thousands of years and extending over the whole earth, that was perpetuated by a caste of professional clergy, so Ruse an writers have held that politics is all lies and in princ ole amoral, and was inculcated by a caste of professional politicians. For this reason, the special 'Russian' path to salvation which they have constructed has always consisted, not in the control of politics by society, but in the removal of society from politics, with its imp ed acceptance of authoritarianism. Utopianism was another result of this combination of political naivety and a passion for political prophecy. Invariably that utop inism was reactionary, presenting the traditional backwardness of Russian political culture as the summit and crown of human thought. Take, for example, the following quotations:

You [the leaders of the USSR] will still have unshakable power, a single, strong, closed party, the army, the police, industry, transportation, communications, natural resources, a monopoly on foreign trade, and control over the value of the ruble — but give the people room to breath, think, and develop!

The people desires for itself one thing only: freedom of life, thought and the word. Not interfering in the power of the state, li desires that the state not interfere in the autonomous lift ot its spirit. . . .²

Don't these sound as if they were written by one and the same hand ^; However, the first quotation belongs to Solzhenitsyn, while the second, as we already know, was addressed to completely different leaders at another time entirely. Konstantin Aksakov, 130 years ago, was saying to the head of the Russian Orthodox state exactly the same th.ng as Solzhenitsyn was telling the Soviet leaders: take all power for yourself, but give the people all the freedom. The people wilt not interfere in politics, Aksakov and Solzhenitsyn promise, they desire only to breathe, think, and develop freely. For only by separating themselves from politics, they believe, can the people realize their moral essence. Yet alas, as history shows, where the people do not control the government, the government controls the people, not letting them either breathe, th> ik, or develop

The theme of both these letters is the same. The questions which both authors raise coincide, as do their answers But Russia remains m the same situation it was a century ago — trapped by hes. I wonder whether the parallel occurred to Solzhenitsyn when he repeated the demands of his teachers — demands which have failed the test of history.

From Unaer the Ruooie

As we saw in the last chapter, already m the early 1970s the liberal nationalists had turned out to be generals without an army. Yet the lessons of Veche., and of The Nation Speaks went unheeded. In the mid-1970s Ihe authority of Solzhenitsyn and the courage of his adherents made possible yet another (and probably the last) bright flash of national-liberal thought. Moreover, the collection of saniiz.dat articles From Under the Rubble without doubt represented, in terms of L-Nationalism, an intellectual advance over Veche. Since it did not have to observe the constraints of 'the loyal opposition^its authors were free of both the explicit pressure of Soviet censorship and of implicit dependence on the 'patriotic masses'. They had no need to resort to the traditional methods of allegory used by the loyal oppositionist Russian press or to speak to the reader through innuendo and association of ideas. Solzhenitsyn was right when he said, 'In fifty years there has not been irf the Soviet Union an anthology of such scope and seriousness that sets out basic problems and is so decisive in its treatment of them, in complete contrast to their official formulation.'³

The 'From under the rubble' current "of the national-liberal stream also had another characteiistic It aspired not only to independence from censorship (both 'from above' and 'below'), but also from its old teachers. Neither Danilevskii nor Khomiakov served as absolute authorities. The authors who published in From Under the Rubble were their own Aksakovs and Berdiaevs. They embodied the effort of the post-Stalinist Russian Right to stand on its own two feet and rid itself of the 'second-hand' character of VSKhSON and Veche. They created their own metaphysical, religious, social, and political concepts independently, and from square one. However, in so doing, they fell into the trap of what I would call 'the repetitive effect' in Russian history. For all its courage and literary vividness, the New Right did not re-invent gunpowder, as we saw from the comparison of Solzhenitsyn and Aksakov. All they did was to reach — on their own initiative and independently — conclusions analogous, if not identical, to those reached by their Slavophile predecessors a century earlier under what would seem to have been completely different historical conditions.⁴ Hopefully, this will become clearcr when we start to analyse the political views of From Under the Rubble's, chief author.

Evolution of a Doctrine

At the beginning of the 1970s, when Solzhenitsyn wrote his Letter to the Soviet Leaders, it seems that he was not at all convinced of the hopelessness of Western democracy or that authoritarianism should be Russia's eternal late. Discussion was still possible with Solzhenitsyn while it seemed he was in the process of groping for a political doctrine of his own. He himself said in the Letter, 'I am prepared to retract right now [his practical proposals] il anyone at all will offer not a wry criticism but a constructive path, a better way out, and, most importantly, a completely real one, by earthly means.'⁵

It is true that Solzhenitsyn's Letter to the Soviet Leaders has a chapter entitled 'The West on Its Knees,' in which the author speaks of 'an impasse on all sides' and even 'the ruinous path' of Western civilization. Nevertheless, he still believes that, 'it is still probable that Western civilization will not go under. It is so dynamic, so inventive, that it will survive even the impending crisis ^p In other words, although the West lives by 'centuries-old false notions', its case is not hopeless. For that matter, the Letter speaks of authoritarianism in a restrained and even rather questioning way: 'Thus, perhaps we should recognize that for Russia this patn Lthe struggle against authoritarian­ism] was mistaken and premature? Perhaps, in the foreseeable future, whether we like it or not, . . . Russia is nevertheless destined to have an authoritarian system? Perhaps this is only as far as she has matured?'⁷ I would argue that this is an entirely reasonable and pragmatic point of view, in which three points that I consider indisputable are expressed in a manner unfamiliar to the Western ear

Democracy is imperfect It needs further development, and s capable of such development

The transition from authoritarianism to democracy takes time. At present, Russia is not capable of it Therefore, withm the foreseeable future, she can be expected to remain authoritarian.

'Everything depends on what kind of authoritarian structure awaits us.'⁸

This last point seems to me the most important. In fact, even the militant Jeanne Kirkpatrick admits that various authoritarian political systems can critically differ from one another⁴ and thus a typology of authoritarianism .s possible. That Kirkpatrick. like Solzhenitsyn. reduces this typology to a black and white d^;st\nction between Communist and anti-Commm st authoritarianism is another matter There is. however, a healthy kernel in her analysis. Russian autocracy for example, unlike, say, English or French absolutism, did not harbour the potential for transition to democracy and, in a series of counter-reforms, has been closing off the transitional path. Therefore it can be termed 'ant'democratic' authoritarianism. Meanwhile, European history (as well as Asian) illustrates that the transition from authoritarianism to democracy is possible both in principle and in practice. Consequently, as well as anti-democratic' authoritarianism there must also exist an authoritarianism one could define as 'non- democratic (i.e., in principle not blocking the path to democratic transition). If this >s the case, then the real problem which now faces both the Russian and the world intellectual community is to find out what are the possible paths for Russia's transition from an anti­democratic to a nor.-democratic authoritarianism, capable, in principle, of becoming a democracy. To do this, it is necessary to study, for example, what happened in Russia during the decade Khrushchev was in power, and what is taking place in Hungary arid China today, where the backbone of the Stalinist economic system (which is the essence of the Russian-Soviet model) is gradually being dissolved in the heat of constructive reforms.

Thus, if Solzhenitsyn did indeed begin the 1970s seeking 'a better way out, a completely real one, by earthly means', he had at his disposal the constructive experience of Russian (and Soviet J reforms, which, although they were not attempts to introduce democracy, did in fact offer strategies for moving the country in that direction.

Moving in the direction of democracy can thus serve as the criterion for evaluating any given oppositionist strategy, including Solzhenitsyn's own. Using this criterion, it would be relatively easy for us, having carefully examined European history, to discover where and how the actual process of limiting power and moving in the direction of democracy began. We would soon see that the motive force and principal agent behind this movement has always, and without exception, been the middle class, which is created in the turmoil of fundamental socio-economic change — that is, the very process that occupied Khrushchev in Russia and occupies Kadar in Hungary and Deng Xiao Ping in China today, even if this is not their intention, fn any case, without a strong middle class there can be no transition to democracy — that is the main and indisputable lesson of world history. If Solzhenitsyn had mastered that lesson, it would have become clear to him that his own proposal (to start the transformation of centuries-old Russian authoritarianism by appealing to the Soviet leaders' mystical 'Russian souls') is the least 'earthly' and least 'real' of all possible paths.

ЛИ f wish to show by this is that the main question of Solzhenitsyn's Letter (What kind of authoritarian structure awaits us?) is entirely reasonable and that genuine dialogue with him may have still have been possible at the beginning of the 1970s. Unfortunately, this dialogue never took place. Consequently, in the Solzhenitsyn of the mid-1970s — the author of the 'Answer to Sakharov' published in From Under the Rubble¹⁰ — we already encounter a completely different, person, not the austere but well-meaning critic of the West who spoke of the prematurity of democracy m Russia and was open to opposing viewpoints, but the author of a precise and rigid conception that condemns Russia to the authoritarian yoke till the end of time This Solzhenitsyn 110 longer seeks an answer to the questions which previously tormented him He has found the truth He has come to despise heterodoxy. In so far as he sometimes does not hesitate to slander his opponents, to lie openly in the name of the cause he considers right, he no longer differs from his Moscow opponents ¹¹ Unfortunately, the truth for which he is prepared to forsake even the most elementary norms of fairness, not to mention Christianity, turns out, as we have seen, to be no more than a reperition of old Slavophile maxims.

The Utopia of Enlightened Authoritarianism

In repeating these maxims, Solzhenitsyn, of course, observes all the trappings of our time, fashioning the image of the era he needs. First and foremost, he introduces the theme of the internal equivalence of both systems — democratic and anti-democratic. It turns out that these are simply 'two societies suffering from \ ices'.¹² Their vices are different but their sentence is the same — death.

In other words, not only does 'anti-democratic authoritarianism have no future, but neither does democracy. Hence he devaluates freedom — intellectual and political — as the historical goal of the nation: 'The West has supped more than ts fill of every k'.nd of freedom, including intellectual freedom. And has this saved it? We see it today crawling on hands and knees, its will paralysed, in the dark about the future, spiritually tortured and dejected ¹³

So much for intellectual freedom. As for political freedom, with its inulti-partv parliamentary system, Solzhemtsyn sees n ^;t only an 'idol'. He calls attention to its dangerous, f not mortal vices', which lead to a situation where 'the Western democracies today are in a state of political crisis and spiritual confusion',¹⁴ and concludes that, 'a society in which political parties are active does not rise n the moral scale.'¹⁵

But that's not all. Along with his dannnng critique of the West, Solzhenitsyn plays up the moral value of authoi ^;tarianism. On this basis, the old Slavophile image of 'two freedoms' — one nternal and one external — which Solzhenitsyn has discovered anew for himself, arises and resounds ever more strongly Apparently, 'we can firmly assert our nner freedom even under external conditions of unfreedom ¹⁶ More than this, under authoritarianism 'the need to struggle against our surroundings rewards our efforts with greater inner success'.¹⁷

The implication is that, not democracy, but authoritarianism leads by the shorter path to inner freedom, which itself is declared to be the goal of the 'historical development of the nations'. From here it is but a single logical step to the statement, unexpected from Solzhenitsyn, that 'the state system which exists in our country is terrible, not because it is undemocratic, authoritarian, based on physica' constraint — a person can still live in such conditions without harm to one's spiritual essence.''⁸ However, if in democratic systems a person cannot live 'without harm to one's spiritual essence,' while in authoritarian systems one can, then which type of system is to be preferied? Which system is healthier for 'inner freedom' and 'moral elevation'?

his s the point to which Solzhenitsyn has come in the absence of any dialogue — to a justification of 'outward unfreedom'. Here, he repeats Aksakov's Utopia of 'enlightened authoritarianism', according to winch, on the one hand, the full range of powers over society are vested in the government, and, on the other, this is supposed to assist that society's 'moral elevation'.

The Hisioricai Validation

So how can the capitulation to authoritarianism of a man wjth the reputation of a great Tighter for freedom be explained? Like every self- respecting Russian writer, Solzheni+syn must have for this purpose a sort of histor cal justif cation. Tnose who have read the old Slavophiles would not have great difficulty in deducing it. But let's go to Solzhenitsyn's texts.

On the one hand, he says, Western democracy is unsuitable as a pattern and model for Russia's future because it stems from the secularism of European culture: 'This is mainly the result of a histoi cal, psychological and moral cr >is affecting the entire culture and world outlook [of Europe], wh Л were conceived at the time of the Renaissance and attained the peak of their expression with the e'ghteenth-century En>ghtenment.'¹⁹ On the other hand, the existing form of Communist authoritarianism in the Soviet Union is unsuitable as a pattern and model for Russia's future because of its non-Russian origin. The Soviet system is not, apparently, the product of Russian history, but the result of the fact that a 'dark whirlwind of Progressive Ideology [Marx ;m] swept rJ on us from the West'.²⁰ Solzhenitsyn tells us that 'Soviet development is not a continuation of Russian development but a distortion of it carried out n a new and unnatural direction, hostile to her people.'²¹ Consequently, 'The terms "Russian" and "Soviet" . . . are not only . . not equivalent but irreconcilable opposites, completely excluding one another '²² In fact, 'For a thousand years Russia lived with an authoritarian order — and at the beginning of the twentieth century both the physical and spiritual health of her

people were still i'ltact ²³

'Who is to blame⁷' is a traditional Russian question. ¹ he whole Russian idea arose from the presumption of Russia's guiltlessness of her own misfortunes. In the seventeenth century the musketeers (strel'tsy) revolted because 'Germans are walking around in Moscow, spreading the habits of shaving and tobacco, to the detriment of all standards of common decency.'²⁴ Whoever has read Katkov knows that the Poles are to blame. Whoever has read Sharapov knows that the Jews are at fault In our day, whoever reads Chalmaev or Antonov knows that it is the West. Even if we accept thxs mode ot thought — profoundly humiliating for the Russian people, depicting it as helpless, blind and ready to follow any foreign influence — a key question remains unanswered: Why did that 'dark wb.rlwim attack, not the West, which as we know has lived in uninterrupted 'historical, psychological, and moral crisis' since the sixteenth century, and where there is 'a passive feeling of doom in the majority', 'weakness of governments and paralysis of society s defensive reactions and 'spiritual distress passing over into political catastrophe, "⁵ but rather Russia, which did not pass through any fatal Renaissance, has not been in crisis, and in which 'at the beginning of the twentieth century both the physical and spiritual health of her people were sti 1 intact ' Why has not one putrid democracy in the world succumbed (apart from those dragged into it by force), but only authoritarian regimes — Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam, and so on?

One would think that this elementary question would compel a truth-seeker at least to reflect. But is Solzhenitsyn seeking the truth — or only a justification for his political concept? If so, then he is seeking the impossible. Russian history does not confirm his outlook, .'his was proved, by those very same Slavophiles whom he so passionately defends yet so carelessly read. It was they, as we know, who called the alleged enlightened authoritarianism of the Russian Orthodox empire 'a governmental system rendering the subject a slave' and a police state'. It is true that m criticizing Russia's 'soul-destroying despotism', they too considered it the result of a 'dark whirlwind' from the West, only the villain of Russian history ia their time, naturally, was not Lenin with his Communism, but Peter I with his police state, allegedly copied from European models. That was when Aksakov believed the 'dark whirlwind' had descended on the Russian »and, while before Peter enlightened authoritarianism was in full bloom and 'both the physical and spiritual health of hei people were still intact.' bus who is right — Solzhenitsyn or his spiritual forefather? Is Lenin or Peter to blame for the dark whirlwind'? Who is really responsible for the destruction of Russia's enlightened author larianism?

If one is to beHeve Gngorii Kotoshkhin, who in the middle of the seventeenth century fled to Sweden and wrote a book about the horrors of pre-Petrine Russia, Aksakov and Solzhenitsyn are both wrong. How far back are we to go? Must we refer to the letters of Andrei Kurbski'. which unmask with explosive force the arbitrariness and ferocity of the rst Russian counter-reform in the mid-sixteenth century? Or to the Journal of Ivan Timofeevl Or to the History of Russia by Prince Shcherbatov, who described the second half of the sixteenth century as a time when 'love for the fatherland died out and its place was taken by baseness, slavishness, and concern only for one's own property'?²⁶ Was this when Russia was 'morally elevated'? And if not then, when?

One thing that no Russ an conservative Utopian ever seems to have noticed is the autocratic nature of Russia's political system — that cursed 'anti-democratic' authoritarianism which doesn't allow the country to break out ol ^:ts vicious circle of reform and counter-reform, pilixig one bloody dictatorship on top of another. To look for a validation of 'enlightened' authoritarianism in this terrible history is to look for a ph osopher's stone

The Religious Validation

By no means are all these arguments and deliberations on the theme of Rus: an history academic. Current political strategies follow directly from them. If the So\ 2t system is indeed the result of a 'dark whirlw id' from the West, then it s a natural and even necessary for Russia to isolate herself. For the positivist Daniievskii (who raised isolationism to the status of a natural law of history), such 'organic' validation of the ^;mperial-isolationist strategy was quite sufficient. Veche too found it saFsfactory, as we have seen. But for Solzhenitsyn's followers, both as people who profess Russian Orthodoxy and as politic ans, an organic h storical validation alone is not enough. They cannot allow themselves the luxury of accepting a positivist as a teacher. They also need an explanation from the metaphysical standpoint of Russ an Orthodoxy. How else are they to attract support tor the isolationist strategy from the growing numbers oi Russian Orthodox intelligentsia? In short, a religious sanction for iheir isolationist strategy is imperative to them. Can it be justified from the perspective of Christianity, which - whatever one may say - is *n is essence universal and for which - alas - there is, in principle, neither Hellene nor Jew? For this reason, we should not be surprised that the political collection From Under the Rubble should include passionate metaphysical tracts by Sol/.henitsvns young friends, aimed at a theoretical justification, in the twentieth century, of the authoritarian-isolationist strategy, in much the same way as Danilevskii had done one hundred years earlier

In his brilliantly executed essay 'The national renaissance and ihe nation as a personality', Vadim Borisov tells the dramatic story of ihe collapse of the myth of 'humanistic consciousness for which the freedom of individuals and the unity of the world as a whole are the alpha and omega."²⁷ This myth, in Borisov's opinion, 'lacks an adequate rational basis',²⁸ inasmuch as personality in ts oi'.girial sense is a religious and even specifically Christian concept ²⁴ In general, the individual is ... a fragment of nature, self-contained and absolute . . . Personality, as opposed to the individual, is not part of some whole, it contains the whole within itself.'³⁰ Not containing within himself the necessary 'whole,' the individual cannot claim the status of a personality. Luckily, on the other hand, something does exist which contains this 'whole' - namely, the 'nation as a personality'.³¹ the 'nation as a whole',³² without which the individual cannot have either autonomous significance or autonomous value.

This, says Borisov, is confirmed, in particular, 'by the events of the Pentecost where the Holy Spirit descended on the Apostles and they were endowed with the gift of speaking in different tongues.'³³ Borisov does not assert that humankind — which is still n bondage to secular •humanism' — is already aware of all this. No, this 'is merely a theoretical fixture of Christian consciousness ' However, he is full of optimism inasmuch as 'every people must strive to realize its full personality,' and he is firmly convinced that, 'the nation is one of the levels in the hierarchy of the Christian cosmos, a part of Gods irrevocable purpose. ¹⁴

At the risk of profaning the metaphysical pathos of Borisov s tract, let us simply state its point as follows: humankind is quantified, so to speak, not by single individuals, as 'humanistic, consciousness' had naively assumed up to now, but by nations.

F. Korsakov's essay Russian destinies^in which discussion of 'the nation as a personality' is brought down from the metaphysical heights of the cosmos to the Russian Orthodox earth, is close in theme to Borisov s article. In a passionate, symbolic stream of speech, full of emotion — indeed, almost a poem — he explains the incompatibility of the 'God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob' with 'the God of the ph osophers and scholars', since behind the mora' stic nonsense of the intellectuals', 'behind that modern humanistic phraseology', there is still the same 'devil with horns and hooves', the same 'form of the Antichrist'. The intellectual, in order to gain access to the Truth, must first of all renounce the need to understand — the freedom to think independently — which s, according to Korsakov, the same as pride, the first mortal sin. In other words, he must cease being an intellectual. Without tf s renunciation he can never believe that, 'the Orthodox Church is the only true church and that all the other Christians, as well as non-believers . . . are li\ ing in a state of untruth, enticed and deluded by the devil.'³⁵ Further on we learn that the riddle of the uniqueness of the Russian natior is beyond understand ag, and that Russia differs fundamentally from 'the whole of the rest of the world, which exists within an entirely different, more open, framework'.³⁶ All the obvious advantages of that allegedly free and open system are constantly nullifying themselves . . . whereas here _tm Russia] everything remains with us.'³⁷ In short, the Truth which is being sought 'merges' with the image of Russ a.³⁸

Given my hopeless ignorance in questions of the hierarchy of the cosmos, I would not dare dispute either the interpretation of the Pentecost which Borisov offers us, or Korsakov's measure of the power of diabolical delusion, under wb ch 97 per cent of all mankind finds itself. I am interested only in the political function of the scholastic works briefly outlined here. In my view, tins function is obvious: it is to provide religious val.dation for the authoritarian- isolationist strategy and to demonstrate the organic incompatib ' ity of the intelligentsia with the credo of the Russian Idea. Let the West crumble ('the allegedly free and open systems null iy themselves'); let the intelligentsia with its humanistic phraseology perish ('the devil with his horns and hooves is ever behind it'). The Truth will remain because it is with us, because it is inside us, because it is Russia.

The 'Smatterers'

I am not a theologian, but an historian. I cannot judge whether the religious validation of the isolationist strategy is more convincing to young Russians than the historical one we have considered. I can only state that a group of talented young people have devoted themselves to attempting this task at the nsk of their freedom — and perhaps their lives. The passion and the polermcal fervour with which they do so indicates that within the complex and. to my knowledge, as yet unexplained phenomenon of the Russian Orthodox renaissance, a fierce struggle is underway. It is a struggle for the polnicul orientation of this cultural phenomenon by which Russia's future will, perhaps in considerable degree, be formed In a more general way, t can be said that a struggle is taking place for the political orientation of the next generation of the Russian intelligentsia. W ill it be liberal-ecumenical or authoritarian isolationist, Western (zing or Tatar-messiamc? In other words, will Russia play a responsible part irr the world political process or will it be a threat to that process, matur ng in isolation until the Day of Judgement, that is the Year 2000? Once again, the outcome would appear to depend on the answer to the basic question which has always dixided the Russian intelligents.a: Is Russia a European country, or should t seek ts own special path'? More specifically, pace Solzhenitsyn, whose answer has already been accepted by many. Was the catastrophe of October 1917 the result of Russian history or of a 'dark whirlwind' from the West?

In 1970 the journal VestniK russkogu khristiyansKogo dvizhema [Herald of the Russiun Chr stian Movement] published a series of essays by Soviet authors writing under pseudonyms and representing the liberal-ecumenical wing of the 'Russian Orthodox Renaissance'. In an essay by N. N. we read:

Bolshevism . is not a Varangian invasion, and the Revolution was not made only by Jews. For this reason the Communist regime is not an external force but an organic product of Russian life — a concentration of all the filth of the Russian soul, the whole sinful outgrowth of Russian history, which cannot be mechanically cut off and thrown away.³⁵

V. Gorskii formulated this viewpoint even more clearly:

Overcoming the national-messianic consciousness is Russia's most urgent task Russia will not be able to rid herself of despotism until she abandons the idea of national grandeur. Therefore, it is not 'national rebirth' but the struggle for freedom and spiritual values which must become the central creative idea of our future.⁴⁰

There can be no doubt that Gorskii here had touched on the contemporary Russian Right's sore point. The response that this provoked in the nationalistic samizdat press is scarcely cred э1е. For a brief I storical instant, all the factions of the dissident Right — isolationist and messianic, 'good' and 'bad' nationalists — united in a fit of -ndignation, forgot their disagreements and strove to wipe the author of th.; blasphemous 'am -Russian' appeal for a 'struggle for freedom' off the face of the earth. The enraged throng included a former leading member ot the VSKhSON (Leonid Borodin), both Os pov and his 'Antonovist' opponents from Veche, Gennadii Sh nanov (who will be discussed later) and, alas, Solzhenitsyn For anyone still n need of further proof that, all these figures developed cheir deologies from the same '.itellectuai source, then it was to be found here n th _ts united front.⁴¹

But what had really happened? What is so terrible about an appeal for the abandonment of na.' onal messian'sm, and for a struggle for freedom and spiritual values? Is the Russian nation really be,rig oppressed by some other nation, rather than its own leaders? They, after all, arc also Russians, who even Solzhenitsyn assumes 'are not alien to their origins — to their fathers, grandfathers, and great­grandfathers, to the expanses of their homeland',⁴² It should be obvious that the obstacle to the true reb th of Russia lies w ,tb a the Russian nation and not between Russia and other peoples. Moreover, is it not obvious that this messiar .sm (in the form of Marxism) is one of the cornerstones of that Ideology — that 'Lie' — which Solzhenitsyn has devoted his life to oppose? Nevertheless, the entire Russian R jht, including Solzhenitsyn, took Gorsk 's essay as a slap n the face.

But unlike others, Solzhenitsyn in his article 'The smattercrs' did not grieve, weep, or prophesy. Solznenitsyn struck, putting all his prestige and world renown into the blow. Solzhenitsyn lashed out not at the 'leaders' (with whom he was prepared to enter into a di ilogue), but at his own admirers. He attacked his former dissident all es, the samizdat thinkers, the intellectuals who were torturously seeking a way out for Russia (some of whom had earlier risked supporting him). He was merciless. He did not take account of the fact that, as Yulia Vishnevskaia wrote, 'when "The Smatterers" was written, Solzhenitsyn knew only too well that his prestige in "smatterer" circles was immense and that any crit .cism of his views would be interpreted as almost a collaboral on with the KGB. ³

When the VSKhSON programme was discussed, I noted the political intolerance of its authors, who were prepared to accept only those 'close in spirit' to themselves. But that was when the Russian Right was in its infancy. Only now — in the bloom of its young adulthood — had it become so overwhelmingly obvious that the Russ an nationalist frame of mind is organically incapable of accepting differences of political opinion. If these people ever come to power in Russia, there would be no flowering of thought', as Solzhenitsyn promises. No opposition would be tolerated, let alone any inti- Russian" one. Something else had also become obvious: if, from the Right's point of view, a 'dark whirlwind' from the West was at the root of all the calamities in Russia's past, then the European, anti- isolationist, anti-messianic orientation of ihe Soviet intelligentsia would be the logical culprit of all future disasters as well. Th s is why the Russian Right was so unfailingly united n their attacks on the intelligentsia in the early 1970s.

In introducing the contemptuous term smatterers into his article, Solzhenitsyn virtually denied the existence of a contemporary Russian intelligentsia, refusing to permil it either human dignity or a moral world outlook, and thereby isolating .t from the process of the country's spiritual rebirth'. 1 do not wish to dwell on the injustice of this verdict, or on the complete absence of logii it demonstrates (comparing the pre-revolutionarv Russ.an intelligentsia with the modern one, Solzhenitsyn is repelled by the former's 'self-sacririce', and by the latter s lack of it.). I wish to call the reader's attention to a d'.fferent and, from my point of view, much more ominous v n cumstance. Reading 'The smatterers' attentively, one cannot help oeing struck by opinions such as 'lack of education is not the greatest loss one can suffer in life',⁴⁴ and recommendations for the creation of a new sacrificial elile' — a new nucleus of the nation, 'brought up not so much in libraries as on spiritual suffering'.⁴⁵ Furthermore, it would seem that educational qualifications and the number of scholarly works published are utterly irrelevant', for we will go to the people alongside semi 'iterate preachers of religion'.⁴⁶ Is there not in all this something very reminiscent of Chalmaev — something which leads one to the conclusion that Solzhenitsyn's 'smatterers' is only another name for Chalmaev's 'educated shopkeepers'? Let us recall that, according to Chalmaev, all the national feats ot heroism in Russian history were performed by 'preachers of religion' in alliance with the 'leaders' of Russia — and, furthermore, performed against the educated shopkeepers'.

Of course, Chalmaev and Solzhenitsyn, the National Bolsheviks and Dunlop s vozrozhdentsy, are all opposed to each other in almost everything concerning Russia's present. Yet, we have seen how miraculously they transformed themselves into allies in all things concerning her past — and, what s more important, her future. Are not Chalmaev's 'ancho* 4cs', who saved Russia from the abyss of sin, and Solzhenitsyn's 'semi-literate preachers of religion' twins, and Chalmaev ; 'tsars' a model for Solzhenitsyn's 'leaders'? We nave already spoken of the similarity between the educated shopkeepers and the smatterers. Thus both Solzhenitsyn and Chalmaev have pinpointed three chief components that determine the structure of Russian society, and they have proved to be identical for both the National Bolshe\ ks and the vozrozhdentsy.

Summary of From Under the Rubble

he concept of a world crisis, 'reminiscent of the transition from the M ddle Ages to modern times' — a crisis arising from the total secula zation of culture in the Renaissance and inevitably lead: ig either to the correction of this mistake, that is, the crea' on of a new religious civilization, or to the ruin of humankind.

The concept of democracy as an historical distortion, which arose from the great n stake of the Renaissance and led mankind ^;nto the dead end of rreligion and the Gulag.

The concept of 'two freedoms' — internal and external — which leads to 'moral freedom' as 'the moral goal of the nation' being counterposed to intellectual and political freedom.

The concept of 'enlightened authoritarianism' as an alternative to both totalitarianism and democracy.

The concept that the contemporary world is made up of three principal components (common to both From Under the Rubble and Veche): a threatening 'totalita *an' China, a decaying democratic West, and a Russ i try .ig to resurrect herself w th an 'enlightened authoritarian' system. There is, in ad< tion, the related concept that Soviet society is also made up of three principal components (common to both From Under the Rubble and Molodaia gvardia)-. namely, the dangerous 'smatterers', the 'leaders' and 'the semi-literate preachers of re^gion'.

The concept of 'the nation as personality' be ig 'God's irrevocable plan for the world', which justi es imperial isolationism.

The concept of the intelligentsia as a harmful secuiar growth on the body of society, which effectively simulates a national elite and thereby hinders the formation of a real one.

The concept of a new 'sacrificial elite, brought up not so much in libraries as on spiritual suffering', summoned to enter nto a

dialogue with the 'leaders' and on the basis of the need for a 'national rebirth', to assure Russia's progress toward a salutary 'enlightened authoritarianism'

Notes

I certainly cannot be satisfied with such папе explanations as, for example, John Bowling offers when he says that, '[Solzhenitsyn's] soul is Russian and not Western' and therefore [he] cannot be understood in Western terms' (Commentary, September 1974, p. 14). This is the explanation which in the nineteenth century Chaadaev heard from Yazykov, and Herzen from Bulgarin. Russian reactionaries have always justified their devotion to authoritarianism by their mysterious Russian soul' which is not to be understood in Western terms.

Solzhenitsyn, Pis'mo vozhdiam Sovetskogo Soiuza. Paris: YMCA Press, 1974, p. 49 lEnglish translation by Hilarie Sternberg, New York Harper and Row, 1976, p. 57.]; Konstantin Aksakov in Teoria gosudarstva и slavianoftlov, St. Petersburg: 1898 p. 41

Vestnik RKhD, No. 112-13, p. 226.

No matter how one interprets this startling coincidence, for me it once again tends to confirm — experimentally — my central hypotheses: (a) the political system which became established in Russia as a result of her first counter-reform (or 'revolution from above'), that of Ivan the Terrible in the mid-sixteenth century, developed not progressively but in a spiral way; (b) in each new cycle of the historical spiral, similar ideological currents have to start their development all over again from the beginning, thus recapitulating all the stages through which their predecessors passed in the preceding historical c\cle.

Solzhenitsyn Letter, p. 5.

Ibid., pp. 17, 21.

(bid., p. 15

(bid

9 Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Dictatorship and Double Standards, Simon and Shuster, N Y 1982.

Solzhenitsyn, 'Na vozvrate dykhania 1 soznania' ['On the Return of Breathing and Consciousness'] in Iz-pod glyb, Paris, YMCA Press: 1974, pp. 7-28.

Let me cite just one example — that of myself. As the reader already knows, I, in Solzhenitsyn's opinion, harbour a 'hatred for all things Russian In other words, I am accused of the same thing which the author of the 'Critical Notes' on Veche accused Solzhenitsyn ol. Moreover, I was also'a communist journalist in Moscow for seventeen years known to no one' inasmuch as I was 'published only in Young Communist and lesser [fora]'. It is true that the open and easily verifiable lie about Young Communist and lesser [fora] he himself deleted from subsequent reprints, so we won t bother to discuss that But what about my alleged seventeen years of journalism however? Where did he get this figure from? Mv book jacket biography says nothing of the kind. It is obvious that Solzhenitsyn made this up. But why not say ten or twenty years? One has to assume that he thought an unexpected, non-round number would sound more authentic and give the impression he could back it up with evidence. This old tried-and-true bluff was highly effective under the Stalinist terroristic system, where a plausible sounding denunciation could cost someone his or her life. So much for Solzhenitsyn's call on us to 'Live Not bv Lies'. For an analogous case see Tlya Z berberg "Neobkhodimy Ra/.govor s Sol/her tsvnm' (A Needed Dialogue with Solzhenitsyn), Great Britain, 1976.

Iz-pod glyb, p. 20.

(bid., p. 21. Compare: 'Look at the West. The peoples . . . have been carried away by vain strivings, . . . and have started to believe in the possibility of a perfect government, have made republics, and have built constitutions, . . . and have become poor in the souls, and on the point of collapsing . . . any minute.' This was Aksakov in 1856 (Teoria . . . , p. 31).

Iz-pod glyb. p. 25.

Ibid., p. 22. Emphasis added.

tbid., p. 25.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 27.

Solzhenitsyn, Pis'mo . . . , p. 11.

Ibid., p. 17. Capital letters in the original.

Vestnik RKhD, No. 118, p. 170.

[bid.

Solzhenitsyn, Pis'mo . . . , p. 45.

Voprosy literatury, 1969, No. 5, p. 91.

Vestnik RKhD, No. 117, p. 139.

M. M. Shcherbatov, Istoria rossiyskaia s drevneishikh vrernen, St. Petersburg: 1903, vJ 5, p. 832

Iz-pod glyb, p. 201.

Ibid., p. 203.

Ibid., p. 208.

Ibid., p. 210.

Ibid., p. 206.

Ibid., p. 207.

Ibid., p. 209.

Ibid., p. 211.

Ibid., p. 165.

Ibid., p. 171.

Ibid.

Ibid., p. 176.

Vestnik RKhD, No. 97, p. 6.

Ibid., p. 61.

See L. Borodin's article in Grani No. 96; V. Osipov's reply in 'Letter to the Editorial Board of the Vestnik RKhD', Vestnik RKhD, No. 106, p. 295; the letters of I. Ibragimov and K. Radugin in the same issue of Vestnik, p. 309—19; G. Shimanov's article in Arkhiv samizdata, No. 1132. This was, as it were, simultaneously a witches' Sabbath, a lament by the waters of Babylon, and a storm of prophesies. To give the reader some idea of the thinking of the authors of these refutations' I will cite only one extract 'In the 13th— 15th centuries, Russia, by shedding its blood, stopped the Tatar-Mongols. The civilized world was thus saved from conquerors who were obviously inspired bv dark forces. . . In the 17th century, the Russian people . . destroyed the Pretender, which made the wars of the epoch of the "time of troubles" . , a prefiguration of the struggle with the Antichrist . . . The pathos of the struggle w^;th the Antichrist inspired the Russian people in the 1812 war as well . . Within the memory of the generations now living the sac: ificial fate of Russia was again fulfilled There are many indications that the Fascist invasion was not only a military but also a mystical ntervention, comparable to the incursion by the heirs of Genghis Khan in the 20th century [read, the Chinese] who are declaring their claim to the territories conquered in the Middle Ages by their ancestors. . Oithodox Rus' still exists . . . [and] will fulfil its religious destinv to the end' (Vestnik RKhD, No 106. pp. 311-12, 314).

Solzhenitsyn, Pis'mo . . . p. 7.

SSHR, Demokraticheskie al'ternativy. Achberg: 197b. p. 187.

Iz-pod glyb, p. 259.

Ibid., p 251.

4b Ibid., p. 255.

14

Diabolerie One

I trust that I have already provided the reader with enough evidence to judge that all the doctrines of the Russian New Right, even the most liberal of them, are distrustful of the intelligentsia. They suspect it of being dangerously inclined toward 'secularity' and 'Europeanism'. Even assuming they would allow the d :ferences of opinion in the area of culture that the^:" proposals for Russia's future include, they none the less have no desire to permit political heterodoxy. They all ignore the crucial question of a polit :al oppos^; ion.

Is it not fai^r to say then that Chalmaev's invective against sa ety and education, Antonov's call for a new cosmopol: an campaign, the patrioi с masses' call for pogroms, the Osipov/Solzhenitsyn 'Siberian gamoit' (advocating the ex-urbanization and d( ndustrializa on of society) and The Nation Speaks manifesto's proposals for the 'ideological reorientation of the dictatorsh'p', are desp e their apparent differences, really all pursuing the same goal? That goal is to construct an economic and cultural model for Russia in which there would be no place for intelligentsia sympathetic toward the West — a model which would require their total removal from participation in the country's decision-making process and replacement by an alternati 'e elite composed of a certain 'truly Russian' combination of 'leaders' and 'semi-literate preachers of religio^L In tf s scenario, Russian Orthodoxy, as a national leologv, would once again constitute the most reliable barrier against 'heretical' European currents, as it did in Muscovite times. In this way the nationalists are trying to safeguard Russia, once and for all, from any new 'dark whirlwinds' springing from the West's 'satanocratic' tendencies. For as long as these tendencies possess such a powerful social ally within Russian society, any attempts to hermetically isolate the country, to immunize it against Western infection, would prove fruitless.

If our assumptions about the Russ an New R jht are correct, we disco\er in the consciousness of contemporary So\ let subscribers to the Russian Idea, the following logical progression

From the moment of us secularization the \\ est pro\ ed an easy prey for Satan

In the centuries that have passed since the Renaissance it has steadfastly fallen under the power of Satanocracy

The existence of Orthodox Russia w hich has fortunately avoided the might* Renaissance embrace of the West const.tutes the principal barr_ker to the total secularization and, thereby satanocratization of the world.

t.4) The West regularly unleashes 'dark whirlwinds on Russia, intended to undermine the source of her internal strength — which is her loyalty to Orthodoxy (.5) It does this tha^ugh secular demons who call themselves the intelligentsia.

Thus, though the general outlines of the problem are clear, the :echmcal aspects of Western satanocratic manipulation, its mechanism, so to speak remaned unexplored and obscure — that is. until the appearance of Solzhenitsyn s Lenin in Zurich. Here for the first time, a mass ve attempt was made relentlessl\ to expose the satanic nature of Lenin and the Bolshevik "dark whirlwind' that took hold of Russia w ^;th the help of the demons" of the Russian intelligentsia poisoned by European'sm It :s for this reason that Lenin in Zurich, in an historical sense, represents the quintessence of the contemporary Russian Idea. In this respect ^:t was its most significant work until the publication of the second edition of August 1914 (which I shall discuss in the next chapter).

In pmciple, I seek to avo^rd using Solzhenitsyn's literary works to judge h:.s political views Howe\er, what he has been writing since he left the Soviet Union seems to me closer to a series of political pamphlets than belles-lettres. In any case, that is the viewpoint from which I shall examine Leniti in Zurich here.

Lenin in Zurich

Lenvn is portrayed in this book as half Russian (or more precisely ore-quarter Russian by blood), and furthermore as despising Russia.¹ " hat his goal, according to Solzhemtsvn, consisted in "completely dismembering Russia ² is also readily clear But less obvious, at first glance, is why Solzhenitsyn makes him encounter a person who is not only his equal — in force of character, in his non-Russianness, and in bis hatred of Russia — but who even, by Lenin's own admission, is superior to him in all these respects. A born fighter, Lenin dod not know fear of anything or anyone. 'With this man alone he fell unsure of himself. He did not know whether he would be able to stand up to [him] as an enemy.'³ 'Lernri knew the key to every Social Democrat in the world, knew the shelf to put him on,' and it was only this one who 'would not open, would not be put anywhere and stood across Lhisj path.'⁴

This person was a monstrous 'amalgam of theorist, operator, and politician'⁵ — the only one in the world who was stronger than Lenin m all respects — in his amazing far-sightedness, unparalleled political intuition and ability to see what no one else did. If he wished, he could deprive Lenin of everything he lived for — his position of political leadership. He had already done this once, at the time of the first Russian revolution in 190.5. Then, 'never straying for a moment, [he] had filled the road ahead and robbed Lenin of the will to go forward, of all initiative.'⁶ Tn that Revolution, Lenin had been bruised [by this man] as if he had stood too close to an elephant ... He sat at meetings of the Soviet, listening to the Hero of the Day, with his head in his hands.'⁷ He even had 'nothing to say from the platform of the Soviet', since 'everything was going ... so well' under the leadership of that other that 'there was no room left for the Bolshevik leader.'⁸

This man was a 'behemoth with genius'.⁹ He possessed some kind of unbelievable 'seismographic sense of movement in the depths [of society']',¹⁰ and 'ruthless inhuman intelligence'.¹¹ He 'had knocked around Europe for twenty-five years like the Wandering Jew'¹² and at the same time was always able to 'prophesy earlier, and farther into the future than anyone else'.¹³ This man even now n 1916 (when the action of Solzhenitsyn's book takes place), sees things more clearly and knows more than Lenin. He could once again take political leadership away from Lenin and thereby ruin him for good. When Lenin is totally crushed and disillusioned, when he no longer believes in anything any more and is planning to go off to America, suddenly this man comes to him and quietly says, T am setting the date of the Russian Revolution for the ninth of January next year!'¹⁴ (and ne .s out by only one month.)

This person is the real 'author . . the father of the first Revolution'.¹⁵ He is the real inventor of the Soviet regime who has every right to say, in Solzhenitsyn, 'my Soviets'.¹⁶ This 'Wandering Jew', this Behemoth', not only does not intend to distance Lenin, this time he himself comes to him, to his weak, beaten and powerless rival, to propose an alliance.

Why? What for? That is the most interesting and important question for us to decide here. Is it not because, in the first revolution, in 1905, he made a mistake in backing a Jew, Trotsky, as the potent ial leader of a Russian revolution? Is it not because he suffered defeat and Russia survived 1905? She must not survive the next revolution. That is why Lenin, the Russian (even if he's just one-quarter Russian), is now needed. That is why, in his memorandum to the German government, he 'had specifically mentioned Lenin ... as his main support. W.th Lenin at his right hand, as Trotsky had been n the other revolution, success was assured.'¹⁷

Certainly this person is a German agent Naturally, he is getting millions from the Germans Of course, he only wants to hire Leiun to carry out his scheme (as an indigenous Russian demon") to destroy Russia, This much is understandable and even obvious But does tins automatically explain his inhuman intellect, h^;s scismographic sense of movement in the depths, his ability to prechct things earlier and farther into the future than anyone else (a capacity which completely overshadowed even Lenin's 'demonic' genius)? Is he serving the German General Staff or are they serving him? After all, the plan is his and not the Germans', and he is playing his own game, not theirs. It s quite clear that the Germans are no more to him than Lenin is — just tools. He is simply using them to achieve his own Satanic objective, as he once used Trotsky and as he now intends to use Lenin No, he is no demon'; he is a tempter of demons ( He always tried to operate behind the scenes, not to get in front of cameras, not to feed biographers'¹⁸). He s the Mephistopheles ot demonry- the instigator, the grey eminence, the true master of history in whose hands both the Bolsheviks and the Germans are merely puppets on a string to be manipulated as he chooses. At least, this is how Solzhenitsyn depicts him. Yet here one involuntarily begins to doubt whether this is a human he is describing

Yes, this figure has a name — he actually existed — Izrail' Lazarevich Parvus (whose real last name was Gel'fond). He was a Russian Jew who wandered around Europe with the sole purpose in mind of mobilizing its resources m order to unleash a 'black whirlwind' upon Russia. Whether by war or revolution, with German money or socialist ideas — what's the difference? An enormous, inhuman goal inspires this inhumanly intelligent creature. And if any doubts still remain that this character is himself Satan (the Jew Antichrist, emerged from the bowels of Russia, as foretold by Konstantm Leont ;:v), then Solzhenitsyn destroys these in one remarkable scene

The Coming of the Antichrist

It takes place in the oppressed and downtrodden Lenin's shabby little room, when the German Jew Sklarz br ings him Parvus's proposal, the one which is to determine the course of Russian history for decades to come. It is twilight outside. There's no kerosene in the lamp, but for some reason it continues to burn without giving any light. It's dark in the room, but Lenin is somehow managing to read. Sklarz has tossed his luxurious hat on the poor table and left his leather trunk in the middle of the room. Lenin reads Parvus's letter and at this point unbelievable things begin to occur. 'His [Lenin s] eyes happened to fall on Sklarz's case. It was heavy, so tightly packed. How did he lug it around? . . . Why did he need it?'¹⁹ Then: 'The hat behind the lamp shifted and revealed its satin lining. No, it was lying quietly, just as Sklarz had left it.'²⁰ Suddenly a strange thought occurred to Lenin: 'What did Sklarz want with that case? It looked as big as a boar.'²¹ Then without warning, of its own accord, 'the handle of the big case flopped to one side . . Snap! '²² At this point the reader already begins to smell the unmistakable whiff of sulphur, especially since 'there was no kerosene in the lamp, but it had been burning for an hour. . . ,'²³ (Is this not a tiny tongue of hell's fire?)

Snap! The suitcase had finally burst open . . . and freeing his elbows, straightening his back, he unfolded, rose to his full height and girth, in his dark blue three-piece suit, with his diamond cuff-links and, stretching his cramped legs, came one step, two steps closei. There he stood, life- sized, in the flesh ... the elongated dome of his head, the flashy bulldog features, the little imperial — looking with pale watchful eyes. Amicably, as ever.²⁴

Satan had appeared. Izraill Lazarevich Parvus — risen from the darkness — was standing before Lenin personally and speaking, although he wasn't there. And Lenin answered him. 'Although speech was still difficult . . . Even without words they understood each other perfectly.'²⁵ This mysterious (though traditional) appearance out of nothing and this speech 'without words', and the fact that Parvus 'breathed in his [Lenin's] face with a marshy breath' makes the skin crawl, doesn't it? But the main thing is what Satan said to Lenin; how diabolically flattering and disarmingly compelling the demonic logic of his speech was. The reader feels how 'Parvus's behemoth blood spurted from the latter into Lenin's feverish hands, poured into his veins, swirled threateningly in his bloodstream ²⁶ And then everything vanished. 'No table, no Sklarz. Just a massive Swiss iron bed, with the two of them upon it, great men both, floating above a world pregnant with revolution, a world which looked up to them expectantly . . . and the bed sped again around its dark orbit '²⁷ Satan had 'forced, pumped . . . his behemoth blood' into Lenin ²⁸

Summary

And now, after crossing ourselves, let's sum things up. Naturally, we are not so much interested n Parvus's real role in the Russian Revolution as n his imaginary one in Solzhenitsyn's book And this role is clearly unambiguous: to raise up a defeated 'demon who will visit a satamc orgy of destruction upon Russia.

The image of satanocracy', as the reader will no doubt recall, haunted the Russian New Right from its very beginning, even VSKhSON. In the Antonovist 'Letter of the Three', published in Veche, ii had already provided a pretext for alliance with the regime. But all that was pale, fleshless, and written with a bloodless political pen In Solzhenitsyn, with his talent for the anthropomorphization of dead symbols, this image comes to life before us — powerful, convincing, frightening. This, apparently, is how satanocracy looks in the flesh. This is evidently how ihe Antichrist bought the Russian intelligentsia (in ihe person of Lenin) with German money. This is how ihe 'dark whirlwind was born. How can the intelligentsia be trusted after this? Do they not indeed deserve political annihilation? How can they not be excluded from deciding the fate of the country? Must not the devil be expelled from the sick body of Holy Rus'?

Earlier we saw how Solzhenitsyn's thought unintentionally became intertwined with that of Chalmaev. Here we see how it intertwines with that of Antonov and how the 'dark whirlwind' of struggle against the lumpen drives it irrevocably into the arms of Black Hundreds Nationalism.

Notes

1 'And why was he born in that uncouth country? Just because a quarter of his blood was Russian, fate had hitched him to a ramshackle Russian rattletrap. A quarter of his blood, but nothing m his character, his will l is inclinations made him kin to that slovenly, slapdash, eternally drunken country' (A. Solzhenitsyn, Lenin v Tsumkhe, Paris: \MCA

Press, 1975, p. 87) [English edition: Lenin in Zurich, trans, by H. T. Willetts (New York. Bantam Books, 1976), p. 95. The bracketed page references in subsequent footnotes refer to this edition.]

2

Ibid.

P-

30 [30].

3

Ibid.

Р-

99 [108].

4

Ibid.

P-

99 [109].

5

Ibid.

P-

114 [126].

6

Ibid.

P-

102 [112].

7

Ibid.

P-

105 [115-16].

8

Ibid.

[U

16].

9

Ibid.

P-

15 [12].

10

Ibid.

P-

112 [124].

11

Ibid.

P-

Ill [122].

12

Ibid.

P-

100 [109].

13

Ibid.

P-

101 [111].

14

Ibid.

P-

Ill [122].

15

Ibid.

P-

115 [127].

16

Ibid.

P-

129 [143].

17

Ibid.

P-

121 [134].

18

Ibid.

P-

106 [116].

19

Ibid.

P-

100 [109].

20

Ibid.

P-

106 [117].

21

Ibid.

P-

102 [112].

22

Ibid.

P-

107 [118].

23

Ibid.

P-

106 [119].

24

Ibid.

P-

107 [118].

25

Ibid.

P-

108 [1191.

26

Ibid.

P-

99 [108].

27

Ibid.

P-

110 [121].

28

Ibid.

P-

131 [145: slightly modified].

15

August 1914:

Solzhenitsyn versus Solzhenitsyn

One thing that strikes anyone who attempts to take in Solzhenitsyn's political evolution at a glance are his dramatic and repeated renun­ciations of his own earlier views. Moreover, in every case the process of renunciation has been complicated by the fact that all his prior convictions had seemed to him at the time to be the only views possible ('the truth is one', he stressed in 1982).¹ One might suppose that to a dogmatic mind believing in the singularity of truth, not having experienced the crucible of a sceptical liberal education and thus unaccustomed to self-criticism, the renunciation of each succeeding absolute truth would, in its own way, represent the ena of the world Yet, Solzhenitsyn has managed to survive all these ideological metamorphoses. For each of them, however, he has had to pay a price.

Three recantations

In his youth, at the end of the 1930s, when for the first time he thoughl of writing a giant cpic about the Russian revolution, his truth amounted to a rather trivial, for Russia at the time, anti-tsarism. From this, apparently, came the plan of opening his epic (which is now called The Red Wheel) with the fearsome annihilation of the Russian forces that occurred in Hast Prussia in August 1914. From ihe point of view of his truth at the time, this approach was perfectly adequate It exposed the hopeless corruption of the Orthodox monarchy and its ineluctable doom in precise terms. This, one must assume, is where he, at that lime, saw the higher justification for the revolution — its inevitability.

In the Gulag, the revolution lost its charm for Solzhenitsyn. He

renounced his previous anti-tsarism and became, as did we all then, an anti-Stalinist and a fighter against political idolatry and 'soul- destroying despotism'. We owe One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich and Cancer Ward to this, the first of his recantations. It produced in him an explosion of artistic inspiration. However, toward the end of the 1960s, while he was writing his Gulag Archipelago, came his second recantat on. Solzhenitsyn became an anti-Leninist (thereby winning the hearts of his Western anti-Communist fellow-travellers) and a Russian nationalist (to which these fellow-travellers did not attach at the time any particular significance).

Just as the diss dents had considered him one of their own in the 1960s, so the extreriist ant Communists began to consider him one of their own n the following decade. From the point of view of his fellow-travellers, many of whom called themselves neo-liberals, his political evolution should have reached its completion at this point. In fact, where is there to go further to the right than neo-liberal anti- Communism? Further is fascism.

The neo-liberals face the same disappointment which befell Soviet dissidents before them. In the historical epic which Solzhenitsyn is writing today, the ideological key to which is his new two-volume edition of August 1914, he recants a third time. According to his current version of the truth, Leninism itself turns out to be 'almost an episode' and 'in any event, a consequence', of liberalism. The new Solzhenitsyn sees the source of Russia's misfortune not in Leninism but n liberalism. Thus the source of the approaching worldwide disaster for him now lies not so much in Communism per se as in his recently acquired neo-liberal fellow-travellers (who are allegedly clearing the way for it).

If the reader still needs more proof of the ideological degeneration of 'good' nationalism, all he need do is examine the new edition of August 1914 and the articles, interviews and letters accompanying it. Reading this, however, might prove to be somewhat of a trial in and of itself. Solzhenitsyn's senes of ideological recantations have punished him with the worst th ng that can happen to a writer — artistic sterility and the loss of balance and sense of proportion, something which a wr :er cannot do without.

A new truth

'For six years I read neither their collections of essays, nor pamphlets, nor magazines, even though many of the articles were attacking me specifically. I was working at a distance, and was obliged not to meet with any of them, anywhere, or to get to know them or talk w ith them Occupied by my uzly[5]. I dozed through all their attacks and polemics during these years. The vast mass of printed matter had already shown that their hackles were raised. I had already been spattered with the black oil from two dozen [muckraking critics'] brushes . . . chey choked on their own venom '² This is how Solzhenitsyn complained in his letter 'Our pluralists' [Nashi pliuralisty], addressed this time not to the leaders of the Soviet Union, but to the Russian people, and directed not against a 'black whirlwind from the West, but against their own contemporary mtcllectual elite.

Solzhenitsyn now imagines himself a heroic knight, alone in his quest to save Russia. He sees himself opening the eyes of a city and a world which had been languishing for so many decades in gnorance Even his academic fellow-travellers and the neo-hberal anti-Communists have so far not yet gone beyond Solzhenitsyn's earlier conviction, that a band ol Bolshevik conspirators destroyed Russia, and the October Revolution is the root of her misfortunes. Having become wiser from the experience of fighting with the Russian Westernizers m the emigre community, who 'choked on their own venom'. Solzhenusyn has now moved on

Today his truth consists in the following: 'Properly speaking, there was [only] one revolution in Russia. Not the one in 1905 and not the October one It was the February Revolution that was the decisive one which changed the course of our history as well as that of the whole earth The October Revolution is almost an episode and, in any event a consequence of the February one.'³ As he explains in August 1914 'In the foreseeable time, Russia could not have moved or even survived if her monarchical image and foundations had been demolished ⁴

In other words there cannot be a Russia without an Orthodox monarchy is Solzhenitsyn's current truth In fact, a Russia which is not autocratic and not Orthodox is not recognized as Russia at all. It is painful for him to observe his liberal critics' attempts to immortalize the overthrow of tsarism, and he sees it as another of their efforts once more to unleash a 'February catastrophe' upon his country If suddenly tomorrow the party bureaucracy were to fal, , he warns, 'these cultural forces would also come to the surface — and we'd hear their constant wailing not about the peoples needs, not about land, end not about [our] extinction, ... but about rights, rights, rights . . . a i what s left of us they would see smashed apart in yet another February, in yet another disintegration [of the nation], 5 Ten years of struggle in the em gre world with liberals and opponents of Communism has conv.-iced him that the root of Russia's troubles is not at all in Communism but rather in the ruinous 'wailing about [human] rights.'

The Leont ev connection

The reader may perhaps recall that earlier I spoke of a paper I delivered at the 7th Congress of American Slavists in 1 975, called 'The Paradox of Solzhenitsyn: Halfway to Konstantin Leont'ev'. At the time, I had in mind the danger which Solzhenitsyn's political evolution faced from the moment he began to serve as spokesman for the reborn Russian Idea. He had begun by distinguishing himself in the 1960s by his struggle against political idolatry, like Konstantin Aksakov a hundred years before. Now his search for a 'truly Russian' alternative to the Soviet reg me threatened to slip into an apology for Orthodox monarchy that would be no different from Konstantin Leont ev's. For this metamorphosis to occur, all that would be needed was a crisis — the catalyst for deolog cal degeneration. I could not have known in 1975 just what that fateful catalyst would be. I knew only that he was then already half-way into this transformation. Now we know what happened: it was a decade of struggle Within the emigre community that acted as the catalyst. Solzhenitsyn was actually transformed into a latter-day Konstantin Leont'ev. The metamorphosis was complete.

God forbid that the majority of Russians reach the point that, step by step, already many Frenchmen have, i.e., [to become] accustomed to serving and loving any kind of France. What good to us is a Russia that is non-autocratic and non-Orthodox? What use is such a Russia? Such a Russia could be served only out of need and dumb fear.⁶

It was Konstantin Leont'ev who said that, and for just that reason he proposed 'freezing Russia, so that she won't decay.'⁷ He wouldn't have forgiven her a liberal, westernizing revolution. For him that would have been the beginning of the end of Russia. Yet isn't this just what we are now hearing from Solzhenitsyn?

Even if Russia freely voted tor a republic instead of an Orthodox monarchy (as she, in fact did do in the elections to the Constituent Assembly in 1917), Leont'ev would have refused to accept her choice. He had no need for a Russia that was not both autocratic and Orthodox. It wasn't Russia he loved, but the autocracy in Russia Solzhenitsyn in the 1980s, like Leont'ev in the 1880s, has no need of a non-autocratic, non-Orthodox Russia either. In August 1914 he himseU found the words which epitomize that branch of Russian thought to which he now belongs: 'the intolerant extreme right, which doesn't wish to see any development of society, any movement in thought, nor moreover, any compromises, but only the prayerful worship of the tsar and the country's stony immobility — one more century, one more century, one more century.'⁸

Sotznenitsyn ignored

One way or another, today's Solzhenitsyn does not doubt, any more than did Leont'ev before him, that his critics are enemies of the Russian people. Otherwise, why should they remain silent about his epic, which he offers as the main means of averting a new catastrophe for Russia? He has dedicated his life to this epic. He has renounced the world for its sake and, like the mythical Atlas, has taken the whole weight of the universe upon his shoulders. Meanwhile, the critics take no notice. They squabble with him as if wilh some rank-and-file politician, judging him by his speeches and nterviews, but behaving as though his gigantic literary masterpiece, which unravels all historical riddles and answers all questions, simply did not exist.

Well there they are, my ten volumes. And there's a dozen historical chapters — attack them! Smash them! Such an expanse [of ideas] for you! Here is a complete program to be disseminated — Shipov's [program] (at present still deeper than anything which has been offered by our pluralists). Is the print too tiny? Don't their eves pick it up? No! They squabble with me like with some party propagandist They fall all over one single paragraph of some interview.⁹

As a human being one cannot but feel sorry for Solzhenitsyn. A man spends years in self-imposed confinement wriung volume upon volume of a gigantic epic masterpiece not just of literature, but of philosophy and history too, and a group of his fellow-countrymen — 'smatterers (among whom, by the way, number some of the best Russian editors and literary critics) — ignore the product of his labour — a work which includes within it a new War and Peace, a new Devils and a new Fathers and Sons. They can spatter him with 'two dozen [muckraking] oil-laden brushes' if they like, but what really hurts is that they «gnore his profound programme for Russia's rebirth as though it didn't exist.

Later we w.il examine more closely the Shipov — Solzhenitsyn programme for 'combining autocracy and self-rule'. More important however, is that, for the first time in all these years Solzhenitsyn has finally referred to the source of his inspiration. For now, we ask only one question: why are Solzhenitsyn's - stubborn countrymen so insensitive to the greatest literary masterpiece of our era? Why do they so doggedly refuse not only to acknowledge his spiritual leadership, but even to recognize his epic as 9 work of art? Is there indeed not a mystery in all tf s — especially since we're talking about the same people who just a few years ago were his most devoted and ardent readers and admirers? These are the same people who cried over his 'Matriona's Household', who felt Ivan Denisovich's grief as their own and who swore revenge when reading his Gulag Archipelago

Solzhenitsyn's explanation we already know: it is a conspiracy against Russia. 'Va: ous levels of development, various ages, various degrees of independent thought, but all of them,' he accuses, 'singing one deafening tune: against Russia! As if they had made an agreement.'¹⁰ But this is hardly an explanation. What reason would all these sons of Russia have to conspire against their homeland? Why should they renounce the new works of the respected and admired author of The First Circle and Cancer Ward? They might not have agreed with h з view in the 1960s either, but that didn't stop them from acclaiming him as the brightest new star in the Russian literary firmament and a new hope for a literary revival. So why do they avoid discussing his new books, and criticize, or even mention them?

Had Solzhenitsyn asked himself these questions, and had he not been too proud ever to meet or talk to anyone about it, he might have discovered the answers to the mystery years ago. But the truth might have been too terrible to accept.

The critics

To one American neo-liberal critic, very well-aisposed toward Solzhenitsyn and valuing him for his anti-Commur sm, there is no mystery here at all. He read August 1914 (in its first ed'l'.on), and compared it not only with One Day in the Life of Ivan Detusovich but also with War and Peace. His conclusion is devastating:

War and Peace, one of the greatest of all novels, is aiive in every detail and August 1914 is, to put it plainly, dead from beginning to end Neither the fictional nor the historical personages are truly realized, and though the combat scenes are scrupulously rendered they remain staged set pieces with no power to arouse the emotions or to draw the reader in. As for the narrative line, it is driven by the grim energy of the author's will and not by the inner compulsion through which the living organism of a genuine work of novelistic art always unfolds tself In short judging by August 1914, Solzhenitsyn's epic of the Revolution fails utterly in its claim to stand beside War and Peace. Beyond this, it bespeaks the collapsc of the hope that Solzhenitsyn would rescue and revive the great stifled tradition of the l^th-centun Russian novel.¹¹

Such is the merciless verdict of a well-wishing American critic who is m no sense an 'enemy of the people' nor one who in any way 'hates all things Russian' On the contrary, he is filled with the sincerest sympathy for the Russian people, sufferi lg under Communist oppression So, even to his political allies, Solzhenitsyn s epic August 1914, whatever parallels it contains to War and Peace, Fathers and Sons or even The Devils seemed utterly out of place. They were books created by great masters of literature. Alas, all that emerges from under Solzhenitsyn's pen these days is merely a raw, helplessly constructed and, at times, densely confused mass of print, devoid ot any artistic sense. Everything is so poorly focused that some chapters could have been left out, or others added, without damaging the work as a whole. Unfortunately, it is also excruciatingly boring to read.