To achieve this, it is not economic reforms or civil rights which are needed. It is not the Soviet system which must adapt itself to the people, but the people who must adapt themselves to the system, understand it and take it to their hearts as their own native source of authority 'which is from God . For only by accepting and dissolving it into themselves, can it be made truly a people's regime.
Here is the blueprint for the bridge that will span the gulf which m the 1970s separated the intelligentsia of Russian Idea from ts grassroots supporters In all the metamorphoses of modern-day L-National- ism we have considered so far, from VSKhSON's revolutionary theocracy in the 1960s to Solzhenitsyn s apologia for Orthodox monarchy in the 1980s, Communism has consistently figured as a phenomenon alien to Russia and inimical to her historical tradition. Shimanov is the first in the post-Stalinist era to have legitimized Communism by fitting it into the Russian political tradition,13 as one of a series of tribulations — sent by God to save and preserve Russia.
As before, Communism, of course, remains an evil, but an evil that is not just incomparably less than those which threaten the nation from without, but is Russia s own indigenous evil, which can always be reconciled. This evil cannot simply be expunged from Russian life, as the national-liberal sectarians believed, rather it must be transcended through a co-operative effort by the whole nation at the spiritual and intellectual levels.
Shimanov thus provides the theory for the idea Veche s 'Orthodox patriotic' readers were trying to express more instinctively: namely, the reduction of world evil to a single focus. He has managed to construct an ideological justification for the Orthodox masses' intuitive drive to make peace with the regime in the face of the impending nation-wide threat. He pacifies and comforts these masses whom Solzhenitsyn had aroused and then cast out into the wilderness, declar.ng them to be living by lies, He absolves the Orthodox believers of the sin of collaborating with an atheistic regime. To counter the teachers of national-, beralism, who cannot abandon their sectarian anti-Communism, he declares, 'To protest against our regime means to go agL nst God.'14 He persuades 'patriots' that only by collaborating can they make the regime truly national. Shimanov not only writes God with a capital letter, but also Soviet Authority. He understands perfectly that to construct a bridge to the 'patriotic' reader, he must banish the sectarian elusions and utopianism of his predecessors.
ne VSKhSON, we recall, was dedicated to the idea of a 'revolution of national liberation' and the armed 'overthrow of the Communist oligarchy' Veche proposed, not a revolution, but the creation of a second, Orthodox, Russia in Siberia that would be separated geographically from Communism. Solzhenitsyn attempted to realize Veche s plan by appealing to the 'Russian souls' of the Soviet leaders to renounce their 'alien', 'Western' ideology. (Later, at the end of the 1970s, he realized it was imoossible to change the leaders' minds with words, and began to appeal to the 'Russian souls' of the Soviet military instead — thus, 1 a sense, he came back to the ideas of VSKhSON15).
Despite the differences within these approaches, they all originated from the same assumption: that a true Russian renaissance could only begin without the Communists. Nonsense, replies Shimanov in concert with the 'patriotic' masses, Russia is already undergoing a renaissance. Moreover, Communism, far from hindering the process, is aiding it, first and foremost by preserving Russia from the ravages of bourgeoisifica
For the national liberals, the West - though hopeless and otten - is their sole ally, who, however weakly, still defends them from the Communists. In other words, the national liberals need the West the same way that 'patriotic' readers need Communism. For Shimanov, ihe West is a plague, the source of 'pagan-bourgeois infection which must be wiped out if humanity is to survive Of course, to Shimanov, like Solzhenitsyn, the hateful 'smatterers' are Jewish or Judaizing intellectuals — 'civilized savages', as he calls them. He hates them for the same reasons the Young Guards did — because they 'feed on the refuse of Western civilization ' Not surprisingly, Andrei Sakharov's programme is 'Kike-Freemason' to Shimanov. Nor does he have any sympathy for the national liberals, who, in his opmion. dress up like patriots while echoing the 'Kike-Freemasons He ridicules them mercilessly.
'From a reading of his |Solzhenitsyn's] Letter w the Soviet Leaders, says Shimanov, 'it may appear that Solzhenitsyn has already outgrown democracy and passed over from it to autocracy (that is Russian style monarchy)/ but, he adds wryly, 'this is true only if one reads inattentively. He has actually taken this step just with one foot, while the other remains . . . where it was "17 Shimanov s critique of Solzhenitsyn 'from the Right' is very important for us. because it leads straight to the core of his political concept. To Solzhenitsyn's call on the leaders to abandon the state ideology. Shimanov says nonsense', because 'for an ideocratic state to abandon its ''deology means simply to commit suicide . I The Marxist ideology ... is the foundation of our state . . [And] it is necessary to see to it, not that Marxism is mechanically discarded, but that it is transformed by life itself and . . transcended 18
'Comicai and miseraole democratic void'
Thus in the ideologv for Russia's future charted by Shimanov, he not only plans to use the religious elements n Marxism, which is to become an organic 'union of Nil Sorskii with Lenin' (a mixture of Russian Orthodoxy with Leninism), but also he believes that this future state must remain ideocranc — that is, having a single, monopolistic ideology that excludes any differences in thinking.19 Shimanov, like his pre-revolutionary counterpart Sergei Sharapov, believes in dissidence only so long as he is not in power. This is why he viciously attacks Solzhenitsyn's early speculation as to the 'free flowering' of ideas in a future Russia. He will not tolerate any such freedom; it is not needed by anyone in Russia apart from the small band of Judaizing cosmopolitans: 'It is time to abandon the ridiculous prejudice that a lukewarm atmosphere of "freedom of thought" and "freedom of creat vity" is the best one for the maturation of truth and great art.'20 - "
Note the paradox of Shimanov's doctrine. Here is a dissident, a freethinker, who openly preaches the totalitarian suppression of heterodoxy and hates the very principle of dissidence. When we try to analyse the basis of this paradox, however, we see that it is only the log'cal consequence of Shimanov's concept of the state. 'In Russia,' says Shimanov, 'there has been too much suffering and God will not permit it to be resolved in the conical and miserable democratic void. There must be no Western democracy for us.'21 Earlier, Leont'ev had put the case more precisely when he declared that, 'The Russian nat'on has expressly not been created for freedom.'22
But why must there be no democracy? By answering this question we can explain all of Shimanov, even h ; justification of political informing which he shamefacedly tries to support with a long quotacion from Dostoevskii;23 and even his appeals to 'create an amb'ence of allegiance' to the state 'as the only one possible for Orthodox Russian patriots.'24
Shimanov asks, 'Can we really, with valid authority, label as democratic, regimes which have emancipated themselves from solving moral problems in favour of purely fiscal and police functions?'25 To Shimanov, a state can only exist in the full sense if it assumes responsibility for the moral tasks of society, >t defines the nation's goals and leads the nation towards them. This is because the state must be a 'tool for the transformation of the world', for a new crusade. It must therefore have total control over its subjects, in a way that democracy cannot
How do the Western democrats relate to the regime? Why, whoever wants to, approaches it . . . and begins to shake its breast . . . arguing his rights . . . until the poor regime no longer knows whom it is supposed to serve and to whom it should be subjcct ... is demoralized . . . and in effect abandons power . . . instead of firmly defining what must be and what must not.2b
In other words, a state which is not absolute not autocratic, and does not possess 'a high'v developed nervous system in the form of a Party which embraces the entire organism of socictv almost down to its smallest cell'.27 is not a state at all according to Sh'manov Democracy is bad because it is not totalitarian in principle- and thus cannot exercise such a degree of control.' Converselv the Soviet system is good because it contains the potential for totalitarianism and thus is able to provide such control 2S This is the price Shmianov says the people must pay for their chosen status: the\ must be aware that :t is their fate, their cross and their secret that thev shall be the slave of a totalitarian state.
Mot even the most fanatical foreign Russophobe has ever ventured to pronounce so definitive a death sentence upon Russia. Onlv a person who kneels reverently before the church altar out of love for the Russian people can permit himself to proclaim so openly that his people — the onl\ vessel of the 'true faith' in the world, destined to be the moral teacher of mankind — are in fact slaves. Moreover, what Shimanov's people have to teach mankind is the fine art of slavery
Thus we have Shimanov's F-nationalist Utopia, based on profound distrust of the individual, who — though supposedly created in God s own image — is deprived of the most elementary right of free choice and condemned to be mereh a tool in the hands of an all-powerful and all-benevolent state. The state takes the place of God in this totartarian paradise — and legit .mately so because it is the sole embodiment of the pagan image of the nation, which in the minds of Shimanov and his 'Ultras', has replaced God. For. according to Shimanov. Russia is an object of faith. 2Q
Russia. Nation or Empire?
We turn now to the main paradox of Shimanov's concept On the one hand he asserts that nations must not 'have communion with foreigners when there is 110 need', and 'national organisms must be self-contained and impenetrable to each other,'30 while on the other hand he attacks Solzhenitsyn's early proposal (which would seem to follow logically from this premise) that the Soviet peoples should be permitted to secede from the USSR How are we to reconcile isolationism with imperialism? Unlike Danilevskii. Shimanov calls on the help of Providence, for which of course, there are no paradoxes.
The Soviet Union is not a mechanical conglomeration of nations of
different kinds but a MYSTICAL ORGANISM, composed of nations mutually complementing each other and making up, under the leadership of the Russian people, a LIT! LE MANKIND — a spiritual trigger for the explosion of the great mankind.31
In other words, the USSR is merely the chosen people's laboratory for conducting experiments into the future 'Oithodoxization' of the world. In this sense the Russian people are an exception. Translating Shimanov's mystical revelations into the language of practical politics, it means that the Russian people are the only ones allowed to have an empire — one that is closed, 'impenetrable', isolated from other nations — until such time as these nations are willing to speak with it m its own language — that is, in the language of the Third Reich — sorry, 'Third Romej (to quote Shimanov). Briefly, that is how Shimanov tries to turn his Utopian scheme into a realistic programme for an imperial-isolationist Russia.
Strategy and Politics
In analysing Shimanov's works, one senses a kind of strange dualism — as though you have before you not one, but two writers, who change places with each other minute by minute. The mystical language of miracles alternates with cold officialese; fiery prophecies of the 'Third Rome' give way to the style of a commonplace clerk; pious anathemas against Western democracy are interspersed with vulgar propagandistic invective. This literary 'split personality' of Shimanov's calls for careful interpretation and analysis. Here is an example of one style:
Russia has literally suffered through a NEW THEOCRACY ... for it is quite obvious that we need a patriarchal structure of society different from the present one . . . and a new . . mystical attitude toward the land . . . [This] task is not within the capacity . . . of Western democracy ... but then who can do it? I think . . . that the best instrument may prove to be that force which from its very beginning has made war on God — the system that wrestles with God, which decided ... to turn the whole world around to suit itself — that is what might serve the glory of God better than anything else. I have in mind, of course, the Soviet system, with its essentially autocratic structure, its maximalist aims, and which is so contradictory in its nature and its ideology that it is able thanks to this circumstance, under the influence of the truth of life to change itself from a minus to a plus, and only win from such a metamorphosis.32
Tb;s Shimanov addresses to the Russian ntelligentsia of the era of Russian Orthodox renaissance' - an intelligentsia deep".\ disillusioned with socialism, which is sceptical about the miraculous potential of the 'transformation he promises. Here Shimanox is a sincere defender of the Soviet system; he speaks n a lofty pulpit style he prophesies, his language is full of pathos and fire
Then, in a nearby passage of the same book, another Shimanox speaks, discussing the 'Draft of the Basic Law of the USSR on Public Education and trying to convince the 'leaders' that a clique of Soviet priests' (, е., Marxist an '-religious propagandists) have written the draft 'n such a way that
the obiecr've contents of this . . . draft will do enormous harm to the Soviet state and will damage m the eyes of the progressive world the author.ty of Communist morality [For this reason the draft should be rejected], so as not to compromise our Soviet system by an accusation of violence . done to freedom of conscience — and whose71 . . not the exploiters, not the landlords and capitalists, but plain Soviet working people ... Is it not a sign of [Marxism's] weakness that we should abolish the well-known Leninist position on the freedom both of religious and of ami-religious propaganda0 . Here. 1 think it would be appropriate to recall those hard tunes when our sociew faced b\ a heav'y -armed advancing German Fascist enemy . abandoned the self-torment that was w eakening it. and conquered the foe b the moral and political urity of all our Soviet people. This moral and political unity . . . proved to be superior to all ideological divisions and was of such undoubted value, tested by life itself, that it would be criminal t'rom the point of \ ew of state policy, for us to give it up. The moral and political un.ty of the entire So\ let people is something that we must strengthen, not dissipate by incitement to conflict within our society , Decause, at the acute turning points of history, our state will more than oncc ha\e to encounter dangers no less than that of the past Great Patriotic \\ ar In the face of the very real and growing Chinese chauv inist threat . . w e must strengthen all the healthy forces of society so that at the moment of crisis, they can come to the aid of the state.
I his other voice s that of Shimanov the Party propagandist, who seems to have borrowed phrases such as 'well-known Leninist position he moral code of Communism' and 'the moral and political unity of our entire Soviet people' from an editorial in Pravdn. This Shimanov, using the bureaucratic and pragmatic language characteristic of the leaders', cautiously tries to sell them his own tactical concept of a transformation'. He tries to convince the Soviet state of the loyalty of the 'patriotic masses' and of the fact that they and not the Marxist ideological clique are the 'healthy forces' ready to come to the state's aid The price of this loyalty, however, is that the state return to the 'well-known Leninist position', remember the Stalinist moral and political unity', and agree to 'peaceful coexistence' with the devout Orthodox masses.34
What is of interest here, above all, is the fact that in the 1970s the Russian Idea was acqi-iring its own politics. Not only did it no longer call for the overthrow of the Soviet regime (as VSKhSON had done), but it no longer confined itself to global strategies or histoi cal parallels (in contrast to Vechc and From Under the Rubble); was starting to speak to the Soviet state in its own language. It was beginning to demonstrate the concrete advantages the system can derive from allying itself with the Russian Right — against the clique of Marxist 'priests'. In essencc, it was already accusing its opponents of anti- Sovietism.
It accuses them of undermining the nfluence of the USSR 'in the eyes of progressive world opinion', of inciting internal conflicts' withm Russia itself. It puts before the 'leaders' a practical proposition, weigh up how much you stand to gain or lose before relying on the Marxist ideological clique. It attempts to compete with this clique on the basis of practical politics by showing that the 'leaders' have more to gain by relying on the Russian Right than on its competitors. It addresses the leaders' deeply hidden subconscious fears and asks them with an air of innocence: which is more important to you — tattered Marxist dogma or real power? If power, then reliance — at the moment of crisis — on the 'patriotic masses' :s far safer than an alliance with an impotent ideological clique. Unlike other factions of the New Right, Shimanov conducts his own PR and does business: he advertises his own wares to the consumer and runs down his compet 'tors'.
To the Russian Orthodox intelligentsia he sells the strategy of transformation . For this, high pathos and impassioned preaching are needed. To the leaders, he sells the politics of transformation and the guarantee of their rule This requires business-like prose and vulgar advertising jargon. In both cases, he speaks in a language that is easily understood by the consumer.
To their former allies Shimanovites were 'Ultras'. Yet, in fact, they are not militant at all: they are practical politicians offering the leaders more flexible and effective tactics, a deeper social base, and a broader field of operations for political manoeuvre il case of cnsis. In fact, Shimanov is suggesting nothing more than a Russian variant of the 'historic compromise'. If this is possible for the Italian Communist
Party — and it can remain chaste in spue of it — then why shouldn't it be possible for the Soviet Communist Party?
The Ideology of Russian Fascism
In Shimanov, the Russian New Right has, for the first time, found not only an ideologist who can address the awakened 'Orthodox patriotic masses' in their own language, but also someone who is a potential political leader, capable of transforming a sectarian anti-Communist doctrine into a real mass political movement. Isn't this just what the patriotic' readers of Veche and Solzhenitsyn were clamouring for? But whereas they could offer only resettlement in Siberia or an Orthodox monarchy 111 mothballs, Shimanov offers the 'patriots' the possibility of a real struggle: gradually and legally to transfigure the Soviet state, to remobilize it and transform it into a vital and powerful weapon for repelling the 'Zionist imperialist' global assault scheduled for the year 2000.
Compared with Shimanov, Osipov and Solzhenitsyn really are generals without armies. Shimanov can speak to 'the leaders' on behalf of a political constituency. He is not posturing before the patriotic masses or lecturing them. He is an ordinary man, an elevator operator and a patriot, a true man of the people. He does not bother to appeal to the leaders' Russian souls.' He appeals directly to their interests, instead
In the eyes of the 'patriotic' reader, both Solzhenitsvn and Osipov were compromised by their support from the 'Zionist' West They were interviewed by Zionist journalists, published by Zionist publishers, and discussed on Zionist radio stations. Shimanov is clean n this respect, and has had no such dealings with the hated West. He represents a sector of Soviet public opinion whose strength ihe leaders can easily verify by the most elementary sociological survey (the KGB has a number of highly experienced sociologists at its disposal).
Of course, Veche was the first to discover this source of political capital, but it was Shimanov who discovered how to make use of it. He was the first to lay claim to the role of intermediary between 'the leaders and the 'Orthodox patriotic masses', fn the present climate of reform, and with the arrival of Gorbachev and a new generation of Soviet leaders, the phenomenon of Gennadii Shimanov might seem insignificant However, looking back over the past 500 years of Russian history, and looking forward to the year 2000 from the perspective of
Shimanov and his 'patriotic' masses, we get a rather different impression. For, in reality, Shimanov — and at present he alone — promises to heal the empire's most vulnerable and sorest point: its rapidly growing inferiority complex.
In fact, in the eyes of the world, the Russian empire is ceasing to be a realistic alternative to its principal age-old rival, the West. It is skidding again — as it did at the end of the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. Its leology is increasingly being seen as a scandalized Utopia. Even the Communist Parties of Italy, in the West, China, in the East, Hungary in the Warsaw Pact itself, have been jettisoning everything Russian from their Communist practice and doctr: ne. They arc turning to the concept of a mixed economy, with a state and private sector, borrowed from the West, or to pluralistic — liberal Marxist — ideology. Of course, Russia too could choose to succumb to the reformist impulse, right behind the Hungarians, the Chinese and the Italians. But then she would cease being a leader. She would be reduced to the status of follower, ol imitator, and thus no longer mm .]ue. She would be trading her spiritual birthright for the mess of pottage offered by Western material prosperity. For adherents of the Russian Idea and for the Orthodox patriotic masses, such a course would signify a national humiliation of awesome proportions — comparable to Russia's ideological and political capitulation to the 'Americanization of the spirit', in the language of Young Guardism, or to 'the Jewish drive for world dominion', according to the readers of Veche.
Is there any chance for Russia to regain her spiritual birthright? Is there a realistic alternative to the Soviet system's humiliating demobilization and surrender to the West? If so, then Shimanov's alternative is the only one on offer. His 'new Russian ascetic and spiritual civilization', has no use for 'markets' or material prosperity and thus doesn't need to mimic the Chinese or the Hungarians. This is why Shimanov is important, but his significance has been largely overlooked by Western sovietology. (I shall return to this subject in my concluding chapter.)
At first glance, Shimanov's historical and political concept appears to contain little that ts original. He borrowed theocracy from the VSKhSON programme, imperial isolationism from Veche, and the 'combination of Nil Sorskii with Lenin' from Antonov. From Solzhenitsyn he lifted hatred of the 'smatterers' and a devastating critique of democracy, while directly from the Orthodox patriotic masses he took their rabid anti-sen: .tism. However, the principal novelty of his concept is that he has unrelentingly discarded all the
Utopian and sectarian elements of national liberalism He drained VSKhSON's theocracy of its adventuristic conspiratorial flavour, separated out the 'Siberian gambit' from Vcche's isolationism, and the retrospective Utopia from Solzhenitsyn. and severed From Under the Rubble of its mystical anti-Communism. Most 'mportantly, he contributed something to the Russian Idea which its political constituency had been passionately seeking — the aflirmation of an 'atmosphere of allegiance' to the Soviet state as the 'only possible one for Orthodox Russian patriots.'
That is how the politics of Russian nationalism looked after its shell of bombastic rhetoric had broken and had fallen away. Instead of Orthodox monarchy's double-headed eagle, hatched by the Russian Idea at the turn of the century, this time there emerged a hideous twisted reptile — Russian fascism.
Summary ot the Ultras'
The concept of the Russians as a chosen people, saved by God only thanks to the exceedingly cruel trials he has imposed upon them over the course of theii history. These very tests can be viewed as testimony to Russia's select status.
The concept of the religious nature of Communism, within which the very scope of its activity in орроъкюп to God is transformed into evidence of its having been chosen as Ms vehicle.
(.3) The concept of the Soviet state as an unconscious tool of the Lord, destined to save Russia and in the final analysis (through Orthodoxization'), the world too. Recognition of the principle thai the Soviet system is potentially 'Russian in spirit4? ihus bringing Shimanov closer to Young Guardism and creating an objective basis for the ideological merger of the establishment and the dissident branches of the Right.
The concept of a 'state catastrophe' threatening Russia if the Soviet leaders and 'patriotic' masses do not manage to find a common language and begin to work together.
The development of political devices for uniting 'Russian Orthodoxy with Leninism' and exploiting and re-interpreting the slogans of Soviet propaganda.
(.6) The replacement of muted anti-semitism (VSKhSON and Veche) or symbolic anti-semitism (Solzhenitsyn) by overt anti-semitism linked to the exposure of 'Kike-Freemasonry' (identified with the
liberal dissident movement) as an agent for the forces of global chaos.
The attempt to introduce the image of the 'year 2000' — the appointed time for the final confrontation between Russia and the West — into political dialogue w ,h the Soy et regime.
The concept of Russian fascism as an alternative strategy for Russia as it stands on the threshold of that year 2000.
Notes
Officially the 'Russian Club' was called 'The Society for the Preservation of the Monuments of Antiquity' and was an entirely legal affair. In reality, however, this was a 'party' institution where Russian Idea dissidents regularly gathered with their establishment comrades .n order to exchange views and develop strategies. Pass i ans came to a boh -n the Russian Club in the 1960s resulting in the formation of the Russophile factions.
G. M. Shimanov, Ideal'noe gosudarstvo [The Ideal State] (Keston College Archives), p. 2.
Pis'ma a Rossii and Protiv techeniia.
Moskovskii sbornik, No. 1 (Keston College Archives), p. 68. Emphasis added.
' [OurJ line is "further i lght" than that of the "revolutionary underground", but "further left" than that timid position of universal admissaoility on which you stand ... I think that super-obedience, just ike rebellion, will not bring Russia anything good' (Vol'noe slovo, No. 17 — 18 p. 19).
The works of Konstantin Leont'ev suffered approximately the same fate a century before. His first work, later famous, Vizantizm slavianstvo [Byzantinism and the Slavic World], was rejected by all the organs of the nationalist press and published in an obscure journal — Chtenia v Imperatorskom obshchtstve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh [Proceedings of the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities] — in 187P, where it remained unnoticed until 1885, when the first volume of his collection Vostok, Rossia i slavianstvo [The East, Russia, and the Slavic World] appeared, causing a sensation. This seems to indicate that an ideology's timeliness is not a simple matter of who lived or wrote after whom. In the nineteenth century such antagonists as Ivan Aksakov, Danilevskii, Leont'ev, and Sharapov were also contempora es. A \ lole brew of nationalist conceptions can boil at the same time in the cauldron of right-wing ideas. What matters is the sequence with which — because of changes in historical circumstances — certain doctrines which had until recently shone on the ideological scene, fade into the background, while others, which had previously been in shadow, move into the light.
Shimanov, Как ponimat' nashu is.toriu [How to Understand Our History ], p. 5.
'The Russian nation is increasingly vanishing in a spiritual and physical sense. . . . The soul of the Russian person is degenerating too: in the current spiritual and intellectual emptiness, as if deprived of air, it is fading and wilting. Morality is drying up . . . The most complete disorientation in life . . . the decay of the tamily, spiritual disorganization, drunkenness perversion feeling trapped' (Protiv techeniia, [Against the mainstream ] p. 62).
Ibid
Ibid, p. 18.
Shimanov, Как ponimat' nashy isturiu, p, 5.
Ibid , p. 6. Capitalized n the original.
Here Shimanov, of course, is also taking his cue from Berdiaev However unlike VSKhSON, he is not using The New Middle Ages as his guide, but Istoki i smysT russkogo kommuniztna [The Sources and Sense of Russian Communism], YMCA Press. Paris- 1955. This book was unanimously condemned by nationalists of every shade for its heretical assertion that communism has Russian roots.
Shimanov, Protiv techevnu, p 23.
Vestnik RKhD No. 127, 1979, p. 295.
lb Shimanov, Protiv techeniia, p 90.
Shimanov, Как ponimat' nashy istoriu, p. 8.
Ibid., p. 9.
If we assume for a moment that in a situation ol serious crisis, brought on, say, by the collapse of Gorbachev's reforms, power in Russia came into the hands of the military, they would clearly have an easier time coming to terms with Shimanov than with Solzhenitsyn.
Shimanov, Как ponimat' nashy isturiu, p 8.
Shimanov, Protiv techeniia, p 24.
Russkoe oOozreme No. 1, 1895, p. 264.
Sb manov, Protiv techeniia pp. 97 — 8.
Ibid., p. 101.
Shimanov, Ideal'noe gosudarstvo, p. 6. Emphasis added.
Moskovsku sbornik, p. 26. Emphasis added.
Shimanov, Ideal'noe gosudarstvoi p. 14.
Here again it is difficult not to notice how extraordinarily convenient Shimanov's doctrines are for ideologically justifying the regeneration of the mechanism of totalitarian rule — in other words, for a new counter- reform
Shimanov, Protiv techeniia p. 20.
Shimanov, Ideal'noe gosudarstvo, p. 6.
Ibid., p 16.
Shimanov, Protiv techeniia. p
Ibid , pp. 76-83.
In a private Moscow conversation in 1976, Shimanov also spoke of peaceful coexistence' as a source for improving the Soviet economy, putting an end to the universal embezzlement of socialist property, and drunkenness, as well as increasing the productivity of labour.
Ill
Conclusion
19
Fascism takes to the Streets
In the last century, history was pulled by oxen. It took two generations for the Russian Idea to be transformed from a protest against despotism into an apology for it. Only by its third generation did it prove ready to embrace fascism. Of course, even by the 1870s, an astute observer could have foretold, with some degree of certainty, that an leological doctr ne that preached a spiritual return to the middle ages, would, very likely, toward the end of the century, also return there politically: to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and, that, by the start of the next century, it would take to the streets in an effort to reverse the wheel of L.story by brute force. Before such an observer's eyes a kind of historical experiment would have been unfolding, and the confirmation of his hypothesis would have promised an outstanding academic result.
No such observers, however, existed in the 1870s. The very concept of historical experiment as a strategy for pol: ical research was only to be born a century later n the West.1 As for native liberal critics of the Russian Idea, they — for all their diatribes aga.nst its 'teeth-gnashing obscurantism' — d d not take it seriously as a poll- cal alternative (recall V. Solov'ev's tirade about its 'reckless bantering'). All we can say now, looking at the metamorphosis of the Russian Idea in retrospect, is that it came on to the streets in 1905, as a result of what I call a 'regime' crisis within the Russian political system. But for it to be capable of adopting H .tier's swastika as its official emblem, and total war against the 'kike-Freemasons' as its official ideology, the 'system c' crisis of 1917 was needed.2
We have already several times remarked on the repetition of this metamorphosis begun in the second half of this century. The main difference is that this time it has happened astonishingly qu ckly. In Petersburg Russia it took eighty years for the Russian Idea to come as far as it has today over the course of just one Sovi :t generat m: from a dedicated struggle against 'soul-destroying Communism' in the inid- I9t>0s to being prepared, in the early 1980s, to take to the streets wearing the swastika.
This is how an anonymous sami/.dat author described this phenomenon in August 1983:
Lately, on the streets, squares and parks of many Soviet c'.ies, particularly at night, you will increasingly meet groups of young people whose clothes, speech and behaviour are uncannily reminiscent of the sadlv familiar patterns of Germany in the 1920s, [including] semi- home-made swastika charm bracelets. Last year Moscow already witnessed an attempt to stage a fascist demonstration by Pushkin's monument, on the 20th April — Adolf Hitler's birthday. This year, several days before that date, the principals and party secretaries of secondary schools met for special briefings on what to do in the event of the public appearance 'of pro-fascist elements within a number of groups of youths ignorant of their social obligations' . . . And .ndeed, on the 20th April, public appearances by fascist youths were recorded .n a string of cities. These appearances varied in form: n different cities ana districts, the fascists marched in formation in the streets and courtyards, chanting 'Heil Hitler!' and 'Sieg Heil!'; in olhers. clothed in their uniforms with [swastika] armbands, they moved into coffee bars and discos to declaim their slogans; in still others, there were demonstrations at night, In many cases the fascists started brawls, sometimes they beat up war veterans wearing their service ribbons. They used not just fists, but also knuckle dusters. Those who were involved, were mainly students, young workers, and older pupils from academic and technical secondary schools.3
This might have seemed like exaggeration or rumour had not Evgenii Evtushenko for the first time given publicity to the phenomenon of Russian fascism in the September 1985 issue of Novyi mir. He describes in verse much the same thing as our samizdat author has described n prose, concluding with the sad question:
How could it have happened that these, as we say, units,
were born in a country of twenty million and more — shadows?
What allowed them, or rather, helped them to appear,
what allowed them to reach out for the swastika within her [Russia]?4
Russian fascism abroad
An emigre observer, describing the emergence in New York of 'Russian
Call' [Russkii Klich], a fascist publishing house which publishes Russian translations of 'rare books, which have been phys cally destroyed both in the USSR and the West',5 asked himself the same question as Evtushenko. Already since 1982 — the same year that the first fascist demonstration took place in Moscow — 'Russian Call' has published 87 titles, including Hitler's Mein Kampf, the speeches of Alfred Rosenberg, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the manifesto of the 'Union of the Russian People' and V. Mikhailov's brochure 'New Judea', which I quoted from earlier. The publisher, a certain Nikola^ Tetenov, explains that, 'the value of these' books is that they expose the TRUE enemies of our people and aid the formation of spiritual and national self-awareness.'6 He asks those 'who love our much-suffer ug people' to despatch to Russia 'via tourists, sailors and even by regular mail', books which 'give a CLEAR impression of what happened to Russia and of what morass of decadence and decay the Western world is floundering '7
The same publisher also produces a magazine entitled Russian Self- Awareness [Russkoe Samosoznanie], which preaches the following maxims: 'The Semites have spoiled our motherland, and only anti-semitism will save her. Revulsion toward kikes is implanted m us by the Lord God himself Anti-semitism is a sacred emotion. He who stifles it in himself is not only sinning, but also ruining both himself and his country.'8 Just like the Moscow fascists, Tetenov leaves not the slightest doubt with whom his sympathies lay in the confrontation between fascism and the West: 'As for Hitler, it was he who brought Germany out of hunger and collapse, who Jiqi .dated unemployment, provided his people with a high standard of liv ng and who showed the predator Jews the door.' According to Tetenov, 'The West with .ts human rights has already, with the help of drugs, sexual perversion, advertising and pop music, transformed its people nto a weak-willed mass of consumers, in the historical perspective good only as fertilizer '9
Unanswered questions
How can one explain the emergence of overt Russian fascism fas opposed to Shimanov's theorizing or even the sanu/dat 'patriotic' reader mail) simultaneously in both Moscow and the emigre community (where, as in Moscow, it was unheard of since the 1930s)? Evtushenko, of course, has no answer to thus question. It is a credit to him just to have posed it. An American journalist David Shipler, who lived in Moscow between 1975 and 1979 understood wry well the power of the degenerate Russian Idea (which he calls Russianism) and vividh relates a discussion he had with an elderly Soviet writer We are ruled now by sated wolves', he was told, 'but among those people [nationalists] there are hungn wolves 10
Shipler's explanation of the phenomenon is, however too abstract. The potential force of Russiai ism, whose best-known apostle is Solzhenitsyn says Shipler, lies in its coincidence with the most powerful impulses of both the political hierarchy and the people As it shares Soviet communism's de4-otion to political unaniniiu it also taps the deepest Russian wellsprings of obedience to authorib and such a visceral aversion to diversity that some liberal dissidents find the Russianists even more frightening than the Communists in power.'11 Like the majority of American intellectuals who have encountered Russian nationalism, Shipler falls back on the fundamental stereotypes of political culture. But these stereot\ pes are age- old and static. They cannot explain the dynamic of the Russian Idea: why it vanished from circulation after the 1920s and then was reborn in the second half of the 1960s; why Shimanov. with whom the author discussed many things, so despises Solzhenitsyn, who is represented in Sh.pier's book as an 'apostle of Russianism'. Moreover these stereot\pes cannot explain why the Russian Idea took to the streets and why its disciples await the year 2000 writh such tragic intensm
The explanation of our samiz.dat author is, of course, much less abstract He observes that, 'today among part}, state, and Komsomol act vists all possible sorts of "reflections" "appeals", and "memoirs printed up on mimeograph machines are being circulated which are unoilicial m form, but openly apologetic and simultaneoush menacing m content It is becomi ig exceedingly fashionable to praise the firmness of the leaders of the Third Reich — Hitler, and Himmler and Bormann even more . Books about the Third Reich are becoming favourites, especially among young functionaries.' The author talks as well about a general 'fascisization of apparatus functionaries', and concludes that, the fascist, radical right movement among various layers of Soviet youth that is arising and gathering strength though containing elements of spontaneous protest, plays into the hands of certain groups in the political leadership of the USSR and [even] if they may not be directly inspiring it. they coverth support it. counting on the possible use of this movement to achieve particular strategic goals 12 But if the fascist movement was not inspired bv 'certain political circles then what did inspire it? Why was the 'fascisization of young functional ies' taking place at this particular time? Why fascism, of all things?
These questions have remained unanswered, not least because the leading American sovietologists simply ignore them, or at best treat them as exotic eccentricities — lunatic-fringe phenomena. Conventional sovietological thought has no place for Russian fascism. For conservati/es, who anyway have difficulty distinguishing between Nazi and Soviet 'totalitarianism', all this fuss about fascism in Moscow is completely trivial. What difference does it make? they would ask. Liberals, on the other hand, tend to ignore the uncomfortable fact because it compromises their general view, according to which Moscow 'functionaries', especially the younger ones, are supposed to become increasingly liberal, not turn fascist. One way or another, neither of these groups of experts wishes to see Russian fascism as a problem that requires serious explanation . Some of them, we have seen, confuse the Russian Idea w'th patriotism, while others mix it up with chauvinism, everybody is satisfied However, the issue cannot be made to disappear like this, and still needs to be explained.
An historical parallel
It is here that the theoretical analysis of the degeneration of the pre- revolutionary Russian Idea might be of some practical help In fact, it is hardly possible to suggest any plausible explanation of the sudden emergence of fascist mobs on the Moscow streets in the early 1980s unless we remember that they were there once before. In 1905, it was precisely the powerful appeal of the degenerate Russian Idea, its logic and argumentation that inspired the 'patriotic masses' to take to Moscow streets under fascist slogans. What it signalled then was the arrival of the 'regime' crisis in the Petersburg empire — as well as the approach of its 'systemic' crisis.
Let us recall briefly the circumstances under which the fascist mobs took to Moscow streets in 1905. The unsuccessful Russo-Japanese war had provoked a 'regime' crisis which resulted in an aimed-ate sharp polarization between the two Russias. The 'patriotic masses' led by the fighters against 'Kike-Freemason schemes' readily adapted a fascist coloration while at the same time a moderate coalition at the top of the Russian establishment had been formed initiating Stolypin's reforms. These represented a desperate attempt to save the system by means of changing the regime and so avert the approaching 'systemic' crisis which both fascist demonstrations from the right and revolutionary terrorism from the left foreshadowed. Reformist Russia stayed face to face with its extremist (revolutionary —reactionary) antagonist. Ry .1908 the reformers won the first round of this confrontation.
Now what have we seen in Moscow in the early 1980s? The collapse of a long drawn out regime of political stagnation, the emergence on the streets of fascist mobs; and the formation of a moderate coaliiion at the top of the Soviet establishment iiniiat.ng Gorbachev's reforms. These seem to represent a desperate attempt to save the system by means of changing the regime and so avert the approach ng 'systemic crisis. Once again reformist Russia stayed face to face with her extremist antagonist. Bv 1986 the reformers won the lirst round of this confrontation.
Obviously, the 1905 — 08 'regime' crisis, just as the one of the early 1980s, cannot simply be reduced to fascist demonstration and Stolypin's reforms. There were other significant developments: the tsarist manifesto, and the creation of the Duma, liberal parties and soviets. The specific details of every historical confrontation are indeed unique. However, I am speaking of the patterns of political change in Russia not of the peculiarities of a particular crisis.
The implications of the suggested historical parallel are as follows: by the early 1980s Brezhnev's political stagnation reached the proportions of a 'regime' crisis comparable with that produced by Russia's defeat in the 1904 — 05 war with Japan; in the situation of imperial decline and approaching 'systemic' crisis it couldn't help but provoke both fascist demonstrations and the formation of Gorbachev's reformist coalition; whereas in the 'regime' crisis of 1905 moderate Russia was opposed by left- and right-wing extremist alternatives, in the Soviet Union of the 1980s the only political force having an ideological platlorm and capable of capitalizing on the collapse of reform is lignt-wing extremism; the success or failure of the Russian Idea by the year 2000 depends totally on the success or lailure of Gorbachev's reforms.
A Soviet fascist programme
On 10 January 1Q77, long before the appearance of the Russian Idea on the streets, a tactical programme for the fascist 'transformation' of Russia by the year 2000 was proposed, in its most developed form so far, by Nikolai Erne! >anov to the CPSU Central Committee. According to Emel'ianov:
It is perfectly obvious that the struggle against the highly diversified and highly organized network of Zionism and Freemasonry . . . can be successfully conducted only on a level of still higher organization,
which [n] i'-, on у m the pcv. er of cjr corr.tr/ and аП countries of the ■//z.bl'AX v.ctern ш concert vrkli шет developing countries [to achiev e]. Cx/,terete measures sk/r.g these Iir.es could be as foUov. s
А- On the International Level:
The formation ot a oread WOWL0*riDЈ AMYI-ZI0.4TST AND А2чТ1- J-PEEMASON FiOW, after tk Jftodd of the seti-fascist fronts of the 1930s and '"rGs, oecsrse the menace of Zionist world hegemony, acbednl&i for the year 20CO, threatens all govs of the earth independently of race religion or party sff, ation 'a projected charter ;or this front was presented a i ear ago to the International Deparaeesit of the CPSU Central Committee).
Tfefckfpg Into aceoont the fact teat this will be a front against £0 per cent of all the worW* capital, then the ULTIMATE VICTORY OF THE FROST V. ILL BE THE FIMAL VICTORY OVER THE ENTIRE SYSTEM OF CAPITALISM OK A WOF.LD SCALE.
Time does not wait; while the Zionist-Freer.'.ason train continues its /лтг-й' on schedule toward the year 2r//i it can be stopped only faf a V/OP.LDVi'IDE f MOMT; огЛу this can derail it from the'traclc of world history. Я not, inevitable genocide awaits ALL GOYS
P. On the Intra-Union Level:
The formation of specialized scientific institutes fprovisionally, the Institute for the Study of Zionism and FreeiHasos-ry of the CPSU Centra] Committee;, whose [criteria for] electing ca.dres would exclude from employment individraLs who might be potential carriers of the ideas of Zionism and Freemasonry [read Jews! If Y/est German capitalist government can bar from a hroac range of activities individuals who belong to democratic organizations [read- Communists! then why must the country which v/as the first DICTATORSHIP of the proletariat in the world deny Itself analogous measures against individuals who could be carriers of anti-socialist Ideas? Isn't that why v, e're a dictatorship - - If this stipulation were not observed, the creation of an institute would be pointless (an expanded proposal for this was presented to the Presidium of the 25th CPSU Congress)...
The introduction of a section on 'scientific Amtizionism and anti- Freemasonry' into the social science courses of all secondary schools .. . and into educational programme on television.
The publication of standard textbooks on this subject for institutions of higher education....
The inclusion of this sufcrect Into the mandatory programme of all lev-els of the system of political education [as well as] into the mandatory programme of political preparation for all personnel of the USSR Armed Forces — from common soldier to marshal
The inclusion in the all union republics' criminal legislative code articles which stipulate severe punishments for belonging to Zionist
and Freemason organizations concealment ot belonging to Zionism or Freemasonry ought to be viewed as the infiltration of a hostile agent into our socialist society, with all the ensuing criminal consequences.
The declaration in legislative form (as an edict of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR) that Zionism and Freemasonry are outside the law.
[Waging] a relentless struggle against all forms of ORGANIZED Freemason Zionist activity like the 'Sakharov Committee 'The Committee for Monitoring the Implementation of the Helsinki Accords on Human Rights', 'The Solzhenitsyn Fund to Assist Political Prisoners in the USSR The Soviet Branch of Amnesty International', various kinds of "international seminars on the issues of Jewish culture' and other self- appointed organs, and [instituting] severe criminal punishment for all their participants 13
As we see, for Emel'ianov the time for contemplation (or, as Skobelev once put it 'civilian theories') is over. The hour has come to roll up one's sleeves and prepare for the year 2000. Hmel'ianov does not busy himself with ideological tracts, like Osipov, or with metaphysical sorties into the realm of demonology, like Solzhenitsyn but presents a concrete point-bv-point plan of action, written in the standard bureaucratic parlance in which a mid-level pro-fascist Soviet functionary of the regime of political stagnation is accustomed to express himself Significantly, he makes no mention of the Orthodox- ization of Russia and the world', nor is he interested >n Sh manov's subtle division of 'Orthodox patriotic transformation' into a strategic part (convincing the Russian New Right of the necessity of an alliance with the regime) and a tactical part (convincing the regime of the need Lo ally with the Russian New Right). Hmel'ianov focuses exclusively on tactics. Any appeal to Orthodoxy is irrelevant to his purpose. Even so, there is a noticeable link between F.mel'ianov's document and the ferocious diatribe contained in the 'Letter of the Three', against the 'organized forces of broad Zionism and satanism', which conduct a 'secret struggle against our state from within and Wiihout' In fact, Emel'ianov's programme represents no more than a detailed expansion of 7he Nation Speaks Russian Orthodox manifesto's proposal for an 'ideological reorientation of the dictatorship'.
Solzher itsyn did not manage to formulate a precise deological response to Veche's 'patriotic' readers, or to the 'Critical Notes of a Russian Man'. Shimanov did succeed n doing so, but offered no concrete programme of preparation for the year 2000. This void in the Russian New Right's arsenal could only be filled by a person such as Emel'ianov, who himself had for many years been a 'pro-fascist functionary'.
From this it is clear that the 'pro-fascist functionary' Emel'ianov, the Young Guardist Chalmaev, the Nobel laureate Solzhenitsyn and the elevator operator Shimanov all had common enemies, whether the> calied them educated shopkeepers, kike-Freemasons or smatterers (the one d Terence being that Emel'ianov included Solzhenitsyn's supporters among that damned). Thus, Emel'ianov's fascist programme was firmly built into the Orthodox patriotic temple of the Russian New Right.14
The role and function of the Russian Idea
The Russian Idea, an ideology of imperial nationalism, anses in situations where the autocratic system has reached a peak and is starting to slip into decline (as Figure 1 of the Appendix illustrates). That is what happened in the nineteenth century, and is being repeated in the twentieth. To put it another way, the emergence of the Russian Idea ; associated with the progressive exhaustion of the empire's resources: political, social and economic, but — most importantly — ideological, or spiritual as the Russian Idea's followers say. Its emergence signals the empires nabihty to mobilize the masses, or retain their support, and also signals the alienation of the intelligentsia. In the last century, these resources were used up more slowly. This, it seems, accounts for the slowness of the Russ. an Idea's metamorphosis into a shadow ideology of counter-reform capable, in a situation of 'systemic' crisis, of restoring to the empire its mobilizavtonal character and the support of both the 'patriol c' masses and extremist elements among the intelligentsia.
Once it has arisen, however, the Russian Idea develops accord lg to its own internal logic, gradually changing from an instrument of struggle against internal and external evil into one of mobilization against an 'outward foe', so assisting the rebirth of a garrison-state mentality among the 'patriotic masses'. The nucleus of this evolution is contained in it from the start — in the quest for a third, specially Russian, path between democracy and 'soul-destroying despotism' (as we saw from the examples of the early Slavophiles in the nineteenth century and VSKhSON in the twentieth). At the next stage, faced with a choice between 'human rights' and 'saving the nation', the Russian Idea will always choose the latter. (We have the examples of Ivan Aksakov in the nineteenth century and Osipov in our own time.) From here, the path lies open toward defining i bera) sm as an evil of the contemporary world. (Konstantin Leont'ev in the last century and
Solzhenitsyn today) Then follows the imperial dream of having done with the devil once and for all by means of the 'Orthodoxization of the world (Sharapov at the turn of the century and Shimanov in the 1970s.) Finally, a gigantic image of Satan planning to take over the world is drawn out, which only Russia (with her monopoly on political righteousness) is capable of withstanding. Thus the Russian Idea approaches its natural completion (Odinzgoev at the start of the 1920s and Emel'ianov at the end of the 1970s). W hen the 'Nation speaks', it is invariably about fascism
Reform and Russian history
Judging from their reactions, it is clear that Brezhnevist strategists from Old Square* did not understand the mean ng of the Russian Idea's rebirth They, like American sovietologists, did not see it as a sign of the system's decline and slide into a state of 'systemic' crisis. To them, as to the Russian Idea's Western fellow-travellers, it was only another variety of dissidence, opposing the regime. They were not interested in analysing its signals only in stopping them. Accordingly, the problem was given to the political police to deal with. They managed to track down and arrest the members of VSKhSON, exile Osipov internally and expel Solzhei.itsyn, as well as stifle Chalmaev. What they obviously could not do was to change the Brezhnevist strategy which lay at the root of the problem.
This strategy was laden with political stagnation, social decay and cultural paralysis. It could succeed only so long as the country's resources were still growing, albeit slowly, and the regime's only problem remained how to distribute these resources between, on the one hand, the population with ts growing demand for 'satiety and, on the other, ni'litary-industrial complex with ts growing demand for might'. It failed, however, as soon as the system's resources began to dwindle and the regime was forced to choose whether the interests of the people or the military should come first It was only in trying to resolve this problem, at the end of the 1970s, by which tune the economic and social decline had reached scandalous proprtions, that Soviet politicians, along with Western sovietologists, realized that a
*[Translator's note". Staraia ploshchad' — 'Old Square', where the Central Committee building is located.] change of regime was necessary, a 'revolutionary change', as Gorbachev now calls it.
Once again, as at the turn of the century, Russia is at a crossroads. By destro}\ng the backbone of Stalinist command economy and maximizing the interests of 'satiety', and correspondingly minimizing those of'm ght', the system could pass over into a regime of reform. Judging by Gorbachev's speeches, this s just what he intends for Rus' a. Reformist speeches, however, have been heard countless times before — and not merely speeches. Yet there has never been a Russian reform, over the course of the last 500 years, which has proved to be irreversible. Even the most successful reforms, as we know, either ended in polil cal stagnation, I Let's face the fateful question: What if Gorbachev's reforms indeed meet the same fate as Stolypin s? How will the system then manage to justify ;s denial of the interests of 'satiety' other than by inst tuting a 'spiritual and ascetic' dictatorship in the name of the ultimate confrontation with worldw le 'kike-Freemasonry', wf ch is supposedly prepar ig to storm Russia by the year 2000? The weight of historical evidence suggests that, in the event of the collapse of reform, the system would be forced to turn to the Russian Idea simply to surv.ve — because it would have nowhere else to go by the end of the twentieth century. It would have to accept the strategy of Sh nanov and the tactics of Emcl' mov. Whom to believe? To most Western experts on Russia, such a proposition is, of course, quite incredible. 'Who are all these "Orthodox patriotic" writers and readers?' they will ask. Even taken together, what do the 'Critical Notes', Solzhenitsyn's cabolerie, Shimanov's strategy and ЕтеГ'-inov's tactics really amount to? Who will follow them in risk ig everything to try to 'Orthodoxize' the empire and the world? Are they not just a bunch of eccentric fanatics who have very little power and influence, anyway? What chance do they really have of changing the course of history, when all the most reliable sources (Western experts' Soviet contacts from important circles close to the Kremlin) offer assurances that things are by no means as bad as they seem? There is no doubt that Western experts work w ith the most modern and sophisticated analytical tools available. They have at their disposal statistics, numerous interviews with Soviet emigres, as well as exact methods of research and means of collecting quotations from the speeches of Soviet leaders as backup. Shimanov and those like him have nothing to counter this with except their own personal observations, teehngs and presentiments. But, unlike the accurate and rational experts, the earth is shaking underneath their feet. In the very air of the motherland they sense the approach of a threat which brings with it such a fundamental crisis to the empire that even the wildest fantasies could become reality. Shimanov and his colleagues are living in anticipation of their own 1917 which they expect to come before the year 2000 Whom to believe — the Western experts or the preachers of the Russian Idea0 Certainly, no one will follow Sh nanov or bmel .anov it at the end of th s century, the empire does not undergo a 'systemic crisis. But suppose it does? Even the most liberal sovietologists can t deny categorically that this is a possibility in the 1400s.15 Indeed, as far as conservatives are concerned some of them even preach that the Soviet system be pushed into this fateful crisis, not suspecting that they are actually work ng for Shi.Tianov and his strategy for a fascist transformation of Russia.16 One of the most striking observations about the history of the twentieth century is contained in a book by English historian Norman Cohn; There exists a subterranean world where pathological fantasies disguised as .deas are churned out by crooks and half-educated fanatics for the benefit of the ignorant and superstitious There are times when that underworld emerges from the depths and suddenly fascinates, captures, and dominates multitudes of usually sane and responsible people . . . And it occasionally happens that this subterranean world becomes a political power and changes the course of h'story.'17 Cohn presents us here with his conclusions about one historical experiment — that of Germany in the 1920s. An analogous experiment took place in the 1970s in Iran, supporting Cohn's observation In contrast to the preaching of Gennadii Shimanov, this observation cannot be dismissed as mere fantasy. Yet, this is precisely what we are doing. Why? Notes 1 See Da\ id Singer, 'Historical Experiment as a Research Strategy in World Polities', Political Inquiry, 1 Februan 1974. 'I he difference between a 'regime' and 'systemic' crisis is discussed in my concluding chapter. Straw i mri 1984, No. 1 —2, p. 51. Novvi rmr, 1985, No. 9, p. 32. Zerkalo, [The Mirror), 1985, No. 3, p. 2. Ibid Ibid,, |J 7. Ibid , p. 8. Ibid., p. 10. David К Shipler, Russia: Broken Promises, Solemn idols, Penguin Hooks, 1983, p. 328 Ibid., p. 327. Strana i mir, 1984, No. 1 —2, p. 54. Russkoe. samosoznanie [Russian self-awareness], 1984, No. 4, pp. 11 — 12. Capitalized in the original. It is of no consequence that, personally, N. Emel'ianov is, as one might expect, a maniac and in 1981 was imprisoned for murdering his wife. Fanatics, as is well known, can be ideological leaders, but rarely are well-balanced people, 1 5 J,et us recall: 'If conservative or reactionaries gain the upper hand in ihe 1980s, or if bungled reforms come to naught . . . pressing problems will go urirectified. 'Ihe likelihood would then be high that the 1990s would bring a crisis of legitimacy and far more searching dilemmas for the regime, with its core structures and values open to question and under attack as never before.' (Timothy J. Colton, 7he Dilemma of Reform in the Soviet (Jnion, Council on Foreign Relations, 1984, pp. 78 — 9). See, for example, Richard Pipes, Survival is Not Enough, Simon and •Shuster, 1984. Norman R. C. Cohri, Warrant for Genocide, Harper and Row, NY. 1966, pp. 17-18. 20 Is the West Ready for the 'Year 2000 ? fn any science that concerns dynamic objects an historical approach is the standard investigative strategy. We cannot imagine a geologist studying the dynamics of the formation of the earth's core, a psychiatrist analysing a patient's illness, or even a market analyst, vvho would voluntarily deny themselves the opportur ity of examining in its entirety — the past of the object they are studying Sovietology, though proud of its status as a social science, seems to be the only exception to this universal rule. Moreover, as Richard Pipes complains, it 'aggressively flaunts its ignorance of Russian history.'1 It does not strive to determine the fundamental paradigms of change in the object it studies. It knows nothing about them and — something that genuinely makes it unique in the world of science — it doesn't want to know It is as though sovietology has drawn around itself an imaginary chalk circle which includes only those events that occurred in Russia after 1917.2 Sovietologists, believing in the magical power of generational change within the Soviet establishment, have — ironically failed to notice that a change of generations within sovietology itself has not produced any kind of magical transformation in the Western public's perception of Russia, or even changed their own conceptions. It is true that a younger, revisionist generation of sovietologists rebelled against their teachers in the l%0s. They cast down the old idols. Yet the main taboos and stereotypes remained, and accordingly the rebels stayed within the limits of that imaginary chalk circle. Here we encounter the first paradox of America's Soviet debate: the rebellion in sovietology provoked by Krushchev's reforms met the same fate as those reforms themselves — it petered out into intellectual stagnation Those sovietologists who do dare to cross over the imaginary boundary line, such as Richard Pipes or George Kennan, are very rare. Yet even they do not move forward with their models, but rather backward, attempting mechanically to transpose the traditional histoi-ographic paradigms, popular in the last century, on to contemporary political reality.3 Thus, they too end up inside an imag:'nary chalk circle, only a d-fferent kind — one that was drawn a century ago by pre-Soviet Russian historiography. This is the sccond paradox of the modern Western debate over Russia. The third paradox, and perhaps the most amusing, is that Clio, the muse of history, has seen fit to punish both opposing camps for their neglect of her. She has not allowed them to escape the limitations of the past As a result, today both s.des diligently repeat the misconceptions and errors of those who were most involved in the debate over Russ a's destiny at the turn of the century. In fact, aren't the Western conservatives repeating the arguments of the old Russian extremists (r>rst and foremost the Bolshev ks) in their zeal to deepen the emp re's 'regume crisis by every means poss/ble, so as to bring t to the wb;te heat of a 'systemic с isis — and, thus, once and for all, to r'i the world of the curse of Communism? On the other hand, aren't liberal sovietologists, in denying the poss'oility of a 'systemic' crisis, fraugnt with historical calamity, simply reiterating the arguments of the old Russian liberals? They complacently be -eved in the viability of the tsarist system, refusing to support Stolypin's reforms which were, in essence, the last desperate attempt to halt the empire's slide toward 'systemic' crisis. Western liberals today are just as certain as their Russian predecessors were that, even if they don't lift a finger to support Gorbachev's reforms, the Soviet system will still somehow, on its own, overcome ts 'regime' crisis. The result of this flight from history is pla n to see: just as 1917 caught the West unawares, so the Russian Idea's Year 2000 s beyond the scope of any Western strategies (or game plans', as it is becoming fashionable to call them) related to the superpower rivalry at the end of this century. The Russian New Right has been preparing for this historical calamity — clearly and loudly — for the past two decades (just as the Bolsheviks prepared for 1917.) Yet the West still doesn't heed the signals, any more than it did at the turn of the century. A Replay of the Past Let us consider tsarist Russia at the fateful moment when she ,ust seemed to be overcoming a 'regime' crisis, and Stolypin was desperately trying to hold her back from the brink of the abyss. What. would the best strategy for the West have been then? To deliberately push tsarism over the edge? To involve it in global geopolitical games which it hadn't the strength to survive? To let things contmue in the direction they were headed > Or to support Stolypin, tsarist apparatchik that he was, in his attempt to save Petersburg Russia from a fatal 'systemic' crisis, whose outcome, as we now know, was the emergence in the world of a Communist Russia? At first glance, this last alternative seems as unthmkable as would be a suggestion by someone today to support Gorbachev's reforms. True, Stolypin's Russia wasn't perceived then as a direct threat to the West the way Gorbachev's Russia is now. Still, it was the monstrous tsarist empire. The most abhorrent human lights violations were habitual there, including savage Jewish pogroms Its political system was antiquated and oppressive, its military posture threatening. No one doubted at the time that Petersburg Russia was a medieval state, the Sick Man of Europe. Besides, who was this Stolypin if nnt a tsarist satrap through and through ? The former governor of Saratov province and then minister of internal affairs — hardly an nspir ng record. If one listened to Russian radicals of the ime. Stolypin would emerge as a more sinister figure yet: the butcher of the revolution, the ;nst;gator of the court martials, the violator of the constitution This was an accurate picture What it lacked was the context — a correlation with the alternatives These were either a fascist dictatorship under someone like Purishkevich or a Communist one under someone like Lenin. Cruel as he was, Stolypin did abolish the medieval institution of the peasant commune ana thus opened the gates for the development of the middle class. He also agreed to collaborate ivitb a constitutional body, albeit a truncated one, and so gave the middle class a means of This was the situation in the empire at the time Stolypin was trying to pull it from the brink of the abyss, very much as Gorbachev is trying to do today. Thus, the ultimate criterion for the evaluation of any Western 'game plan is, m my view, whether the Bolsheviks in Stolypin's time (or, the Russian New Right in Gorbachev's.) would perceive this plan to be in their interests, that is, conducive to Russia's transformation into a Communist, or fascist, state. The Game Plans The first, and perhaps most popular, of these was introduced into Amer ca's Soviet debate in 1984 by Richard Pipes's Survival is Not Enough. It is a most elaborate plan to accelerate Russia's decline, to push her over the brink: to deliver her to the Bolsheviks (in Stolypin's time) or the Russian New Right (in Gorbachev's). For Lenin, it would be one more manifestation of the imperialist nature of the West; for Shimanov, a confirmation that the West is indeed part of a worldwide k.ke-Freemason' conspiracy against Russia. For the Jews it would most probably mean a new holocaust. Even so, there can be little doubt that R ;hard Pipes's plan for a crusade against the 'evil empire' would be held in h'.ghest esteem by both the Bolsheviks at the dawn of the century and the Russian New Right at its twilight. It is intended to ensure that reform fails and thereby to accelerate Russia's slide toward the abyss. Another strategy for dealing with a Russia in the throes of a 'regime' cris. was mtroduced into the debate in 1986 by Zbigniew Brzezinski in li i; book Game Plan. Unlike F pes, Brzez isk was not writing a tract or the ev 's of the Russian emp.re compared to the merits of Western democracy. His book is intended as a practical guide for action a a nuclear geopo tical contest. What he is concerned with is Russia's global design to d ;place the United States as the world's principal power and primary stal lizmg influence. This must not be allowed to happen. America must prevail. It can do this by achieving military preponderance, by building a two-tier stratcg.: defence (Star Wars) and by weakening the adversary n any way it can. For example, the rel . on of 55 m llion Muslims, the national sm of 50 n llion Ukrain ans and 10 million Baits, not to mention 40 m dion Poles, are all potential targets for US expl< tation of political unrest within the Russian empire. None of tf s, however, takes into account what happens to Russia as a result of a mil tary contest projected into infii ty. The Bolsheviks would have liked such a game plan. For the Russian New Right it is a godsend. It actually looks as if Brzezinski has incorporated in his game plan the granc asc Young Guardist vision of the inevitability of an ultimate confrontation between Russia and the devil. It would confirm that Russ a's conflict with the West is irreconcilable. It would strengthen the hand of the military- idusti a) complex, the most reliable ally of the New R ght within the Soviet establishment. Finally, by trying to exploit the unrest of national minorities it would trigger the isolation of the empire from the word The onlv wa> Russia would be able to resist such press-re would be che traditional one — to transform hersdf m:o a ortress Thus a new garrison-state in Russia would be ensured whether Communist as after Stolvpin) or fascist (as after Gorbachev' Within American sovietology, there are also more moderate game plans. According to one of these introducec ж l-So by Seweryn Bialer in The Soviet Paradox Russia's reforms: eadership Is in a Catch 22 situation- an irreconcilable contradiction ben veer, on tr.e one hand, the urgent need for radical reform г: home arc on the other, the fear of losing Russian dominance within the errpire and in the superpower contest. Unlike Pipes and Brzezinski. however. Bialer understands that a policy of relentless confrontation may backfire It would ralh the Soviet people arourd the reg.ne g.vlng it the legitimacy it has been unable to win through its pertorrrar.ee But exactly which Soviet regime is Bialer talking about? We heard the Young Guardist Chalmaev and the dissident Sta. r.rst Antonov passionately condemning the flabbv and rotten Brezhnev- regime c: stagnation. Instead, they dreamed of a reg-meoi dctatersh p capab e of combating the 'Americanization of the spirit exterminating the 'civilized savages" and declaring war on the wtsrld-vUee F reerr.ssor — Kike' conspiracv To them Khrushche- s reform reg.me that tad actively fought for a permanent accommodation w.t - the West seemed even worse than Brezhnev s torpor Thus to the preachers of the Russian Idea, it makes all the difference in the wor.d which of these regimes the Russian people would rally behind if the confrontation with the West were projected intc infinity as Pipes s and Brzezinsk: s game plans suggest They would love such a game pian- a permanent confrontation would exclude a repetition of Khrushchev's reformist regime and make a new garrison-state ben: on granc expansion anc the Orthodoxization of the wcrid almost me\:tsbe for E;;ss.a. But would Russia's regime of dictatorship be alleviated if .Ar.en.ca took as a guide instead of Pipes —Brrernski, 3:a-er s game r an o: 'managed rivalry'? Indeed, what is "managed rivalry" if no: a s.ightly civilized version of Brzezinski s game plan. tha. iS : r:e same re.ent.ess and irreconcilable superpower contest only with some rules to the game which both contestants are supposed to obey bjt which a Russian dictatorship might ignore anyway? Unfortunately, the author leaves us in the dark as to whether this strategy wT"-:"d he.p or hinder the Russian New Right's plan to topple the regime of reform anc introduce a regime of d'etatorsh p by the year 2CCC. Vt счпс Gorbachev s regime manage to survive this managed rivalry? Since the chances of this are slim, the Russian New Right would probably have little trouble in accepting Bialer's game plan — as long as it doesn't interfere with their own. A fourth major American game plan was presented in 1983 in The Nuclear Delusion by George Kennan. At first glance it is altogether different from the Pipes— Brzezinski pfan as well as from Biaier's. It passionately protests the nuclear arms race. It repudiates any superpower military rivalry projected into infinity, 'accelerated' or otherwise. It is not beyond comparing the major Soviet policies with those of the Petersburg empire or even Muscovite tsardom. It escapes the traps of the 'evil empire' and permanent geopolitical confrontation. Yet its political conclusions are rather un ispiring. They may be descr jed as non-;nvolvement — both in Soviet domestic affairs and in the arms race. They can actually be reduced to a common-sense formula: live and let 1 ve. But would this save Gorbachev's reform from the fate its predecessors met? Would it help to arrest a new brutal counter-reform? Unfortunately, Kennan's game plan does not address these questions. As one of that rare and precious breed of sov :toloj/St and historian, Kennan undoubtedly knows that Russia is no stranger to counter- reform: that its political past is permeated with historical calamities. Lenin's 'revolution from below' which followed from the 'systemic' crisis precip.iated by the fpilure of Stolypin's reforms, was no less catastrophic for Russia than the 'revolut 5ns from above' of Ivan the Terrible, Peter I, or Joseph Stalin Each was unfai. ngly accompanied by mass terror and all the other horrors of garrson-state despotism, costing the nation millions of innocent lives. These historical disasters also deformed Russia's political culture, blocking her exit from the Middle Ages. They were the cause of the terrible fact that — alone among European nations — Russia has never managed to free itself of its empire, or separate church from state, or base its institutions on the principle of the separation of powers (the basis of every modern state). Kennan, who knows a lot about Russian history, unhKe the average sovietologist, might have found it rewarc ng to ask some search ig questions. For example, can Russia, imprisoned for centuries .n a vicious circle of bold reformist attempts and fierce counter-reforms, free herself without outside help? Doesn't her entire past look rather as a list of desperate efforts to struggle free from an historical trap, while each of them merely pulls the snare tignter? Isn't Russi in history, from this standpoint, just a medical record of the Sick Man of Europe? For centuries the rest of the world remained aloof ol Russia's predicament. This is what Kennan's book, in lull accordance with time-honoured tradition, recommends once more. Yet, as its very title - The Nuclear Delusion — suggests, we are living 11 a rather different age today. What if a new counter-reform should befall Russia in this nuclear era? Might it not, this time, spell disaster for the rest of the world too? Preventing such a scenario would seem to be the central problem of world politics till the end of this century. Unfortunately Kennan's game plan, though more deserving of sympathy than the others discussed here, does not address this problem. There is. of course, no sovietologieal game plan that addresses the strategy- of the Russian New Right for the year 2000. In Pipes, Brzezinski, Bialer, and Kennan, we have, as far as 1 know, presented all the colours of the Western sovietologieal rainbow as far as grand strategies for the rest of this century are concerned. Such is the price sovietology pays for its flight from history. The terms in which we argue The fact thai the Russian New Right is not discussed in America s Soviet debate is only part of the problem What is worse, is that we don't even have the terms in which to discuss it. The necessary instruments of analysis are lacking in our discourse. We know how indiscriminately Seweryn Bialer uses the term 'Soviet regime but he is by no means exceptional. This alone denies us the possibility of probing beneath the surface of the Soviet political process to grasp its inherently antagonistic nature. We haven i yet grasped the fact on which the preachers of the Russian Idea build all then hopes: that the Russian autocracy is in reality a kind of a Tneta-regiine' where every new element (new regime) is the anrithesis ol its predecessor — its negation, not its continuation, as sovietology presumes. Antonov, as we know, condemned the de-Stalhiization of the system under Khrushchev. Others welcomed its de-Khi ushchevization under Brezhnev. If they are now worried about its de-Brezhnevization under GorDachev, it is because their preference was for re-Sta.inization. Thus the notion of 'regime-change' in the Soviet Russian political system is central to all their calculations. Indeed, For us, the single term 'Soviet regime' is good enough to describe War Communism (a garrison-state), NEP (liberalization of the 1920s), Stalin's dictatorship, Khrushchev's reform, Brezhnev's decay, and Gorbachev's desperate attempt at transition to new reform. Even the methodology of the Russian New Right is much more sophisticated than this. Wh.le we could calculate perfectly the number and throw- weight of Soviet missiles, and figure out who were the 'hawks' and the loves' in the Politburo, we were unable to predict either the phenomenon of de-Stalinization after Stalin, de-Kbrushchevization after Khrushchev, or de-Brezhnevization after Brezhnev. We are not only unable to exploit the USSR s innate antagonisms, we cannot even discern their existence. For years we treated the regime of de-Stalinization as Stalinism without Stalin. We repeated the mistake by treating the reg me of de-Khrushchevization as Khrushchevism without Khrushchev and we are still treating a regime of de-Brezhnevization as Brezhnevism without Brezhnev. Just like the generals of the old adage who are always preparing to fight the last war, so sovietologists are always ready to deal with the last Soviet regime. In our analysis of the Soviet system, we are always one regime behind. As another example of how far we are behind in our methodological ammunition, compared with the Russian New R ght, let's take the notion of 'Soviet ideology', a term we use ust as ind;scr minately as 'Soviet regime'. For the ideolog ;t of the Russian Idea, there is no such thing as a 'Soviet ideology', as the reader must have noticed many times throughout this book The Young Guards' rebellion against the deology of 'satiety' and 'education' : a prime example. Antonov and Emel'ianov, respective representatives of the vozrozhdentsy and 'National Bolshevism,' to use Dunlop's language, were calling for a radical ideological transformation within the confines of 'Soviet ideology' The Nation Speaks made the 'ideological re-or ;ntation' of the Soviet state a linchpin of its game plan. Shimanov's entire strategy is centred around the call for a metamorphosis in 'Soviet ideology'. In the final analysis, this is all that the Russian New Right n the 1980s about (if we exclude the increasingly insignificant ant' Communist sectarians of an 'immobile Aksakov cast'). How does all this square with our own notion of a supposedly uniform and immutable 'Soviet ideology'? In fact, I devoted a section in one of my previous books to this last question.4 The main point is that, just as we are dealing with a 'meta-regime' in the analysis of the Soviet political process, so in analysing the Sov et ideological process, we must deal with a notion of 'meta-ideology', — one that contai-is mutually exclusive denominations (or sub-ideologies) which are antithetical to each other There should hardly be anything surprising m this interpretation. After all, we know just as well as Shimanov does, that Soviet ideolog) is a secular religion, only he thought this notion through while we did not For him it is a living truth, an instrument of analysis and for us merely a dead stereotype. For if we were to think it through, the complexity of the issue would be as obvious to us as it is to hnn. Aren't ali major religions in fact meta-ideologies? Catholicism. Protestantism and Greek Orthodoxy are all denominations of Christianity: they share some fundamental beliefs, for example, in Jesus as the son of God. or the Holy Trinity. But that did not bmder chem from becoming sworn enemies during the Middle Ages (as happened in Islam too). Why should Soviet secular religion be any different"5 Table 1 of the Appendix shows the crucial difference between its major denominations- the dictatorial (which I call National Communism), with its ascetic, paternalistic and isolationist values and a mystical belief in the revolutionary transformation of the world, and post-dictatorial (which I call Soviet Protestantism) with its belief in butter over guns, in the imperative of economic reform, in consumer satisfaction ('satiety'") and peaceful coexistence. Somehow we overlooked this great religious schism 'n Moscow in the 1950s. We didn't appreciate the role of Khrushchev as a Soviet Luther who introduced and legitimized the new denomination of Soviet Protestantism into the Soviet meta-ideologv. The proponents of the Russian New Right understand it, however. They are preaching what, in the Soviet ideological context, is a religious counter- reformation — just as they preach counter-reform ">n the political context. What I call the 'denomination change' s just as important to them as 'regime change'. They fully understand the importance of Soviet secular religion (even if it calls itself Marxism — Leninism) as the most powerful resource of pre-modern system ruled by a secular church (even if it calls itself Communist party) at the end of the twentieth century. Unlike them, we sovietologists go 011 repeating ihe old stereotypes without even suspecting what denomination change or a 'regime change' really mean — just as we don t disti iguish between 'systemic' metamorphoses in the Russian empire and its ordinary regime' crises. Perhaps here is ihe answer to the question asked at the end of the last chapter: Why is today's Western intelligentsia as nsensitive to the signals of an approaching 'systemic' ci isis ,11 Russia as they were to similar omens at the beginning of the century? Mow, however, we are able to formulate this question more exphcilly: Why is it that not a single majoi American game plan for the end of the millennium takes into account the possibility of a new systemic metamorphosis in Russia similar to the one n 1917? Admittedly, its previous metamorphoses, those of the 1560s and 1690s which ushered in the empire's Muscovite and Petersburg periods, are too remote for the public to recall or for the experts, in their 'flight from history', to take into account. But 1917 cannot yet have been so completely forgotten. The majest с spectacle of the 200- year-old Petersburg autocracy collapsing in a matter of weeks and being transformed into an almost unrecogi zable Soviet empire, reminiscent more of its Muscovite grandmother than its immediate predecessor, could not, it would seem, have vanished from the minds of experts so soon. Yet somehow it did. Unlike sovietology, the Russian New Right has never subscribed to the Soviet secular church's central dogma, which denies the USSF 5 political relation to Russia's imperial past. In fact, the opposite is true: the entire game plan of the Russian New I ght is based on the assumption that what happened to the Petersburg emp e might just as easily happen to its Soviet reincarnation. In other words, the Soviet period, along with the Muscovite and the Petersburg eras, are all, for the Russian New Right, merely transitory phases of one and the same 'meta-regime', not separate, let alone unique, political systems. Which of these two interpretations is correct? The intellectual poverty of the Soviet secular church is legendary In all truth one would sooner have expected sophisticated and secular Western experts, not the religious preachers of the Russian Idea, to have seen through its dogmas. Still, sovietology preferred to st.ck with Soviet orthodoxy rather than side with the heresy of that orthodoxy's opponents. But again, how do we know that the deologists of the Russian Idea are right and Western experts (and the Soviet secular church) are wrong? To help answer this, let us just look briefly at the history of Russia's political crises over the last half-millennium to see what this can tell us about the nature and potent al of these crises. Do the centuries-old patterns still hold? Imperial Crises: An Attempt at a Typology The principal difference between crises in Russian history seems to be that some of them (which I have called 'regime' crises) left the system's leadership the choice of regime change while others ('systemic' crises) did not. For example, it was the 'regime' crisis of 1905 that brought Stolypin to the helm (just as the 'regime' crisis of the early 1980s did so for Gorbachev), whereas it was the systemic' crisis of 1917 that led to the metamorphosis of the Petersburg empire into the So1 .et one. One could cite other examples. No matter how sharp or painful Russia's many 'regime' crises may have been, and irrespective of how the circumstances under which they occurred may have varied, in every case the leadership retained the option of a 'regime change' On some occasions, this led to the establishment of a reformist regime, as happened in the early 1550s and the lb80s during the Muscovite period, in the Petersburg empire in the 1760s, 1801 and 1855, and in the Soviet empire in 1921 and 1953. It is happening again in the mid-1980s. In these cases the Russian leadership, faced with a crisis which didn't reach 'systemic' oroportions and which it could control, chose the path of reform, thus opening the system up for political modernization. As Russian history shows, however, this wasn't the only path the leadership could have followed. In the 'regime' crises of 1796, 1825 and 1929, it opted for the alternative — counter-reform — closing the system to political moderniza on and establishing 'soul-destroying despotism'. Finally, in a number of other 'regime' crises (again covering the Muscovite, Petersburg and Sot et periods) such as those of 1503, 1613, 1812 and 1964, the leadership chose 'stabilization', which resulted in what I call regimes of political stagnation, where the system stands still, gradually rott 'ng at the root. Though we talk about the leadership 'choosing', it should be stressed that even in 'regime' crises the leadership's freedom of choice is somewhat limited by certain general rules of political change, as can be seen from Figure 2. For example, only a reform regime may follow a reg' ne of counter-reform, whereas a regime of political stagnation may be succeeded by either reform or counter-reform. Furthermore there have so far not been more than two reformist attempts in any one of Russia's historical cycles. The collapse of the secon of tfees ; ha|s always, up to now, been accompanied by a regime of dictatorship. Finally, a failed reform may be succeeded by either a regime of political stagnation (as in 1730) or a counter-reform (as in С :tober 1917), but not by a new reform (similarly, no dictatorship in Russian history has ever been followed by another dictatorship). The other type of Russian political crisis - the 'systemic' crisis - deprives the system's leadership of control over the regime change, saving the system with no option but counter-reform. In such cases,' it isn't the fate of the regime that is at stake, but rather that of the system itself. The only way to avoid the collapse of the system in a systemic' cixsis has, throughout Russian history, been by the establishment of a garrison-state based on a fortress mentality. 'System .c' crises have been rare in Russia. When they have occurred, they have been the result either of powerful reforms that threatened to become irreversible (like the reforms of the 1550s or February 1917) or of the extreme SJ ritual and political exhaustion of the system which threatened its collapse (as in the 1690s and October 1917). Each of the resulting metamorphoses was a genuine and great revolution However, they performed a function directly opposite to that of the great Western revolutions: they did not destroy, but rather renewed and strove to perpetuate, the system s pre-niodern character. They required not only mass terror and a great purge of the old elites, but also radical changes n the mentality of the new elites They not only brought about sweeping political and institutional changes, making Russia almost unrecognizable compared to its former self, they also made ideological revolutions. Each of them marked a catastrophe for the Russian m Idle class, and a return of the system to its initial mec.. aeval parameters — only on a higher level of complexity. It i ei dent from Figure 2 thai as far as political crises in the Russian autocracy are concerned, the centuries-old patterns still hold m the Sov 'at emp re. Lenin's garrison-state was followed, according to che pattern, by a 'reg ne' crisis which in turn led to the establishment of a reformist re^me (NEP). The failure of NEP created another regime' cr sis which, again according to the pattern, led to the establishment of a counter-reformist regime and so began a new historical cycle. The end of dictatorship created one more 'reg me crisis which ended, appropriately, not with another dictaiorsh:' "> but m a new reg^ ne of reform. Where should the new 'regime' cris!s created by the failure of this first reform in a new cycle lead? According со the pattern, into a regime of political stagnation. And so it did. This regime of political stagnation ultimately created a new 'regime' crisis We witnessed it in the early 1980s. It could have led to a new rej^ me of reform. To the dismay of the Russian New Ь ght (but s111 true to our pattern), it did. What now? In all previous 'regime' crises — without exception — and there have been quite a number of them (as we have seen), the Soviet empire followed the age-old patterns obediently. In this respect, Western sovietology's presumption seems to be wrong while that of the Russian New Right has been validated. Russia's 1 storical record simply doesn't suggest any reasonable grounds to expect her to deviate from the general pattern — unless its current cycle is broken by an irreversible reform. Our overview, however, yields another, much more ambivalent conclusion. Apparently, Russia will not be able to escape a crisis in the 1990s rrespeclive of whether Gorbachev's reforms achieve a breakthrough and he succeeds .11 bringing Russia into the European fam.ly of nations, The crucial question is whether the approaching crisis will remain within the limits of a 'regime crisis or go further and bring about a new metamorphosis, whether the reformist leadership will lose control of the situation and so make the Russian New Right's game plan for the year 2000 a credible alternative. The answer depends on whether Russia's nnddle class is strong and articulate enough to be able to meet this crisis, to withstand a new extremist fit within the system, In 1917, as we know, Russia's middle class — even with free enterprise, political parties, a strong voice in the Duma (state assembly) and the initial success of Stolypin's reforms — proved unable to resist the Bolshevik counter-relorm Would it be able to stand up to a fascist counter-reform around the year 2000 — without political parties and without a Duma? Looking at it like this, it does seem that the Russian New Right's optimism is by no means .11-founded. A 'systemic crisis in Russia at the end of this century is indeed a strong possibility. It might become a reality — unless the New Right's game plan is confronted with an equally powerful and realistic reformist strategy designed to strengthen Russia s middle class and prepare it for the coming 'regime' crisis Yet to achieve this, the current reformist effort — unlike all its predecessors down through the centuries — must succeed in breaking the vicious circle of autocracy and become irreversible. But what are the chances of this happening0 What has taken place m Russia or in the world at large that sets the end of this millennium apart from all Russia's earlier experiences of reform? Given that Russia s political past is a history of failed and reversed reforms, why should the outcome be any different this time? Where is the elaborate strategy needed to confront the Russian New Right's game plan to come from — after all, it was not in evidence either in the 1960s, the 1920s, 1917, 1905, or indeed in any prior instance of Russian reform? An Unprecedented Phenomenon It would seem that such a strategy cannot be developed within the Russian leadership, perennially steeped in quasi-mediaeval ideology. Just as Stolypin was sincerely convinced of the unsurpassed advantages of Orthodox monarchy, so Khrushchev believed in the absolute superiority of what he called socialism. Today, Gorbachev still believes in this. There is virtually no chance that any of these leaders, for all their refinea political instinct, energy and dynamism, could in the past — or can today — make the elevation of the middle ctass the primary focus of their political programmes. The very political culture in wh.ch they have been brought up, essentially religious, secretive, rooted in the traditions of censorship and self-censorship, deprived them of clarity or political vision. Add to this that Byzantine tangle of mutual fears and hatreds which is the Russian establishment and you will see that it is no accident that no viable reformist strategy has ever been developed within tne Russian leadership The 'mplications of this are somewhat grave, especially in this nuclear age. For it means that a suitable strategy could only be developed outs Je of the system. Such things rarely happen True, modern history ncludes examples of emigres returning home in triumph to "mpose on their native land strategies developed outside of it. Th s happened in England in the 1660s and in France in 1815. More recently, it happened to Lenin in 1917 and Khomeini in 1979 But these were all examples of successful counter-reformist strategies. To the best of my knowledge there has been only a single case of an outs der, an en gre, who offered support in developing a strategy of reform to a government he couldn't help but dislike and distrust. This was Alexander Herzen, who, with Hs friends, tried to influence the course of Russian h story from London in the early 1860s through his famous paper The Bell. Amaz.ngly, though an exile, Herzen did for a short while ach' ;ve the prominence of a 'second Russian government'. His enormous influence was ruined, however, when Poland unexpectedly rose in rebellion in 1863. Herzen s ded with the Poles, against the overwhelming mapjority of Russians who, to his surprise, appeared no less imperial-minded in a crisis situat' эп than the imperial government itself. Nevertheless, Herzen s short reigr as a 'second Russian government' set an important precedent. It showed that only those who combine in themselves a superior knowledge aoout Russia with Western intellectual culture are capable of accomplisl rig that which has eluded Russia's reformist leaders for centuries: a strategy for Russian reform, however debatable. Might it not also be true that the permanent absence, outside the system, of a powerful intellectual group capable of developing such a strategy is one of the princ эа1 causes of the perpetual failure of all Russ' tn reforms? If so, this is a possibility that the Russian New Right certainly did not build into its game plan for the year 2000. Convinced that the West is Russia's eternal enemy (or, as Brzezinski would put t, permanent geopolitical adversary) — not to mention its being in the service of the Antichrist and upe for Orthodoxization — the Russian New Right underestimates the compassion, the generosity, the powerful instinct for self-preservation the West possesses and, above all its overwhelming intellectual power. In so doing, it has overlooked twro important phenomena which ndeed set the current situation apart from all Russia s prior experiences of reform. The first of these is, of course, the very age we live .n — the nuclear age. This alone would make the West think twice before followi ig Pipes s or Brzezinski's advice and entering into the kind of relentless confrontation with the USSR needed by the Russian New Right to bring its game plan to fruition. The second phenomenon overlooked by the New Right may be still more important. I reler to the unprecedented concentration of knowledge about Russia accumulated .n Lhe West over the last century, and having found expression in the equally unprecedented phenomenon of sovietology. So great is this knowledge, as many professionals in the field are aware, it surpasses n many nstances what Soviet politicians, economists and sociologists themselves know about the performance of their own system. Thus, a superior knowledge of Russia (combined with relative immunity to mediaeval ideological aberrations), which led to Herzen s success a century ago, is being repeated now on a much grander scale. Indeed, some things do appear to have changed at the end of the twentieth century. These changes may even be decisive, if only we learn how to use them. The Necessity of Reform Of course, the parallel between The Bell and sovietology shouldn't be taken too literally. It is strictly functional. Although Herzen was called a Westernizer by his enemies and was as free from mediaeval ideological aberrations as any Russian could be. he still was a Russian emigre, a passionate political writer, a philosopher — one whose heart ached for Russia. In total contrast, sovietology comprises a motley group of academics trained to observe and analyse their subject rather than weep for it, let alone build strategies for reform. It is only the fact that we live in the age of the intercontinental ballistic missile that may compel sovietology to perform the same function as Herzen once did For if a new disaster strikes Russia 111 the nuclear age. sovietologists may not only find themselves without a job, they may even end up unwilling actors in the tragic finale of Russia's political drama. Perhaps this sobering thought will lead Western experts down the same path that Herzen's aching Russian heart once led him. Perhaps its traditional academic detachment will be discarded for the sake of survival. For Herzen, to support the cause of reform within a hated tsarist empire was no small matter either. He had to violate some unwritten but strict emigre rules, as anyone who is fam iar with the standard reactions of Russian emigres to the present Russian reforms will understand. These people hate everything Soviet w;th a passion, reform included, just as Herzen hated everything tsarist. Before he and his friends at The Bell were able to offer, in place of the traditional emigre curses, their support to a reformist regime they rac 'caHy had to reform themselves. There are also other parallels between the reformist situation of the mid-1980s and that of the early 1860s. By the mid-1980s most sovietologists were agreed that what Russ i needs is a thoroughgoing change, radical reform, and at the very least an end to the Brezhnevist era of stagnation, social decay and cultural paralysis. The Russian leadership also agrees with this enthusiastically. In this sense, the mid-1980s are repeating the early 1860s, when for the first time in imperial history the judgement of the imperial leadership coincided with that of reformist outsiders. Moreover, the imperial leadership of the mid-1980s does not explain what it means by 'radical reform'; nor did the leadership of the 18b0s. The reason, one may surmise, is that, despite its confident reformist language, the leadership — now as then — simply does not know what it really means by 'reform'. That is bad enough. What is worse s that Gorbachev, like Alexander II (and, for that matter, Khrushchev) s quite confident that he does know. In reality, he reacts to the situation at hand His policies are shaped more by the usual antagonistic response to the policies of the preceding rcg.me than by any clearly devised reformist game plan. His policies are as lacking it! strategy as those of the reformist emperor of the 1860s. But this should come as no surprise to anyone who has studied political change in Russia or watched its previous reformist attempts. More importantly, the reformist outsiders of today — the sovietologists — also cannot agree on what they mean by radical reform in the Soviet context. Deep ideological schisms, party Rivalries and the intellectual inertia of the Brezhnevist decades all conspire to deprive sovietology of its ability to confront the Russian challenge directly, in this new and much more sophisticated phase Indeed, it would seem that sovietology is as much in need of radical reform as its unfortunate subject (just like Herzen and his friends in London in the 1860s). It cannot any longer allow itself to trail behind the Russian New Right in intellectual sophistication as it d'd through the Brezhnevist decades. So far, as we saw from our brief survey of American game plans, the reformist outsiders of the 1980s are not doing very well. In fact, they are falling behind even the imperial leadership, which has already shown considerable flexibility, if only in repudiating the policies ol the past regime. Like Khrushchev in his early days, the imperial leadership of the mid-1980s has shown ingenu ity and dynamism n two major areas open to immediate improvement — agriculture and foreign policy In a Moscow trying to shake the dust of Brezhnevist torpor off its feet, a cultural thaw is also gaining momentum. In contrast, sovietology is running on the spot. Its own de-Brezhneviz.at'.on hasn't even begun yet Some of the supposedly enlightened outsiders still behave like unwitting allies of the Russian New Right. Others are slow in confronting them with an alternative game plan The very idea of using a Herzen-hke phenomenon in a Herzen-hke fashion is foreign to them The cause of championing the Russ.an middle class, of putting their ntellectual weight behind an attempt to make Russian reform rreversible this time, is as far from them as ever. Yet despite all this, there undoubtedly exists the potential for a new and much more influential Herzen. Another way in wh.ch the current situation resembles the early I8e>0s is that Poland is still ar imperial province and still the powder- keg of Europe, In a few years' time it may once again explode as it did in 1863. It was this explosion that destroyed Herzen's credibility and ultimately Russian reform. It is known that Herzen, believing the Pol.sh uprising to be premature, used his considerable influence with the Poles in an attempt to persuade them to postpone it Of course, he failed Poland was as unpredictable then as it is today. The 1860s Russian reform failed, and in due time was reversed by a counter-reform. Once more, the Russian imperial leadership proved that it didn't know how to go about the business of reform. As soon as the influence of reformist outsiders vanished, the reform was doomed, making counter-reform, in the final analysis, inevitable. Whether, today, a group of reform-minded outsiders will be able to do for Gorbachev's reform what Herzen attempted to do for Alexander (Is, remains to be seen. All 1 can offer, by way of conclusion, are two examples (or elements) of a possible alternative Western game plan to counter the Russian Idea. They are intended to show that it is perhaps possible for sovietology to fulfil such a function. The Eternal Tree ot Life' teory, my friend, s grey, but the eternal tree of life is green,' Mephistopheles explained to Faust. Suppose for a moment that we had never heard of any grey theories such as 'Soviet ideology' or 'the Soviet regime', that our rmnds were fresh and open to observations on the Rusr;an tree of ife. How would the problem of trade between the USSR and the West appear to us then? Would it be reduced to the single recurrent question, 'To trade or not to trade?', which we have been heat ng from the experts for years? If this question makes any sense at all, then it is only from the point of view of those 'grey' theories. As soon as we start to look at things from the position of the Soviet middle class or Russia's political modernization, different questions ar ;e. Is it possible to use trade with the Soviet Union to strengthen the reformist groups within the Soviet establishment — and accordingly to weaken the counter-reformist ones? To put it another way, is it possible to use trade as leverage for deeper ng the innate antagonisms between Soviet elites and to encourage the elevation of the middle class? If this is possible, then how? On the So\ et side, I see three p.incipal actors, not a faceless monolithic 'Soviet regime', involved in the issue of trade with the West The first is the gigan с foreign trade bureaucracy (an important component of the Central Economic Bureaucracy; group 9 in Figure 3). This was created by Stalin as art impermeable screen between Western corporations and their natural partners in the Soviet Union, the rr ddle managerial class. This class itself represents the second of our principal political actors concerned with this issue on the Soviet side (group 4 in the same F jure). The third actor, whose voice may be decisive in the conflict between the first two, is the national leadership, wl ch ncludes, n my view, the Politburo, the Central Committee Secretariat and the office of Secretary General. The national leadership occup es the central position in our Figure (group 6) and represents an independent, though also the most powerful, set of interests in the Soviet establishment. Naturally, these interests are not at all identical either w h those of group 9, or with those of group 4. In the second half of the 1970s sovietologists observed the fluctuation of the national leadership between group 4, who demanded direct access to trade with Western corporations (following the example of the Hungarian middle managerial class) and group 9, who desperately opposed any attack on their prerogatives.5 The struggle ended in a compromise, after the collapse of Russia's detente with the West at the end of the 1470s. The Soviet middle class did not receive 'Hungarian rights' in full measure, but it did make a breach m the foreign trade bureaucracy's monopoly, giving Soviet corporations the right to trade directly with their East European partners. What is going on in the area of foreign trade in the Soviet Union is reminiscent, at least in one respect, of what happened m mediaeval Europe at the dawn of modern history. The reformist elements of the middle class have risen up against a bureaucratic hierarchy which was cutting them off from direct contact with the source of thcii inspiration — it much the same way as Protestantism rose against a Catholic hierarchy that was allegedly cutting believers off from direct interaction with God. This analogy may look superficial, but in fact, it boldly reflects the mediaeval character of the Soviet political system. Is the situation of the Soviet middle class in the mediaeval USSR hopeless? The Reformation's success in England, Germany and parts of Eastern Europe would suggest that it is not. This success is also evidence that, in each i istance, the Reformation depended on the position of the national leadership- ii succeeded where the national leadership agreed to dismantle the monopoly of the Catholic hierarchy. In no instance did the Reformation lead to the undermining of the national leadership's position, only to its reorientation. This is analogous to the way foreign trade reform did not undermine the position of the national leadership in Hungary when its 'Protestant' group 4 won out over 'Catholic' group 9. The middle managerial class simply took the place of the former bureaucratic hierarchy — entering on to the world scene and acqmrmg new skills and experience, new responsibility and new international connections. In so doing, it signiiicantly strengthened its political position within the Hungarian establishment The prospect of repeating this experiment in the Soviet Union depends, therefore, on the position of the national leadership. We assume that its position is not rigidly fixed and that it is free to side with the 'Protestants', should it consider this course of action to be advantageous to its own group interests. Evidently, the maximization of Soviet —American trade is posited as one of the leadership's fundamental goals In this respect, the position of the American national leadership, on whom such trade links depend, becomes decisive in the struggle between two elites within the Soviet establishment Therefore the traditional argument over whether to trade or not to trade with the USSR makes no sense. The real question is, 'Who should we trade with in the Soviet Union?' Should ;t be the 'Cathohc hierarchy', which would strengthen the forces of counter-reform, or with the 'Protestant' middle class, which would reinforce the position of reform? The American national leadership could, for example, offer to maximize trade (and credits) on the condition that business be conducted directly between Soviet and American corporations without bureaucratic intermediaries. This kind of an offer would in no way resemble a political ultimatum — in fact, it wouldn't have anything to do with politics. It would be motivated exclusively by the pragmat : business objective of easing the trade process, and would correspond to the interests of both Soviet and Amer. jan corporations At the same time, it would be strengthen "ng the Russ an m ddle class and preparing it for the coming 'regime' crisis. This is just one example of a possible American strategy oriented toward supporting the Soviet middle class I mention it here only because over the course of many years in Moscow I had the opportunity to study the problems of the Soviet middle class professionally, trying, as best as I could, under the constraints of a censored press, to articulate its group interests. Western expeits don't have to contend with censorship. They have descnoed, analysed, catalogued and produced detailed statistics on each and every nuance of Soviet society Has all this effort been expended so that this fabulous wealth of information should gather dust on Tbrary shelves, or so that sovietological conservatives and liberals go on picking holes in each other's arguments? Couldn't Western experts have at their disposal dozens of viable strateg'es, like the one just described if only liberals and conservatives would work together on the practical problem of moving the Soviet system irl the direction of political modernization? In fact, it is only through joint practical work that sovietology can become an effecli^e counter to the Russian Idea — by helping to school the Russian middle class and the West for the 'Year 2000'. Leont ev's Dilemma Another possible Western game, this time perhaps a little more complex, concerns what I call Leont'ev's dilemma. in the 1880s Konstantin Leont'ev, the most incisive of the Russian conservatives of the past century, nsistently advised the dictator Alexander III not to be swayed by pan-Slavic sentiments, but to leave Eastern Europe in peace. Leont ev s dilemma can be summed up as follows: we haven i been able to integrate Poland into our imperial, Byzantine' culture over the course of nearly a century; what would happen to us if we had to handle another half-dozen Polands? To Leont'ev, such a course could even lead to the destruction of Byzantine culture. In fact, he thought that the empire was doomed from the moment it conquered the Western Slavs. The middle class he so despised ('bourgeois Philist;nes') w as traditionally much stronger and more articulate m Eastern Europe and would set about its destructive work, dragging behind it its Russian partner in a direction 'congenial to Western interests'. A few decades later another dictator, Josef Stalin, who had no Leont'ev to advise him, was unable to resist the expansionist impulse of Russian dictatorship. He accomplished what the pan-Slavists had wanted Alexander III to do, or, from Leont'ev's standpoint, committed the crudest of errors, one fatal to the empire. As a result, Eastern Europe became the mediaeval empae's westernmost frontier. If Leont'ev was right — and he alone in the 1880s predicted a socialist revolution in Russia — then the problem for Stalin and his successors was whether the civilized world would take advantage of the situation to bring about what L eont'ev feared, the political modernization of the empire. Indeed, can the West transform the powerful potential of the Eastern European m For understandable reasons, the peoples who have fallen into Russia's imperial orbi* have so far shown little interest in I.eont'ev's dilemma. They wish to break away from the empire's embrace, not to concern themselves with its modernization. The Germans in East Berlin in 1953 and the Hungarians in 195b tried to do this 'Polish- styk — by frontal assault, a national uprising. This ended, of course, the same way as Polish attempts in the previous century, in bloodshed and failure. The mediaeval empire does not succumb to frontal attack The Czechs, naively relying oil socialist fraternity, tried to escape, in 1968, via the roundabout route of national democratization. Soviet tanks quickly crushed their hopes. Polish 'Solidarity' in 1980 thought it could succeed where the Czechs had failed. Poland is now under military dictatorship. As in tsarist times, the empire cannot be duped. So vanished the last hope that any single province might be able to break free of the empire's clutches — without modernization of the imperial centre. ' his tragic history has a corollary, however. Just as Leont'ev predicted, 'half a dozen Polands' are indeed constantly working away at the empire s destruction. So far, over the course of a few decades, they haven't been able to find a fulcrum with which to overturn their mediaeval stepmother. But in 1968 it was as though one small province, having learned from its own bAter experience, haa inadvertently hit upon Leont'ev's dilemma. Hungary began its process of liberalization not with an uprising, not with a revolutionary attempt at national democracy, but rather with the elevation of its own bourgeois Philistines'. Naturally, to achieve this, it first of all had to breach the empire's economic model which, as always, had been set up to block the upward movement of the middle class. Without any noise or fanfare, Hungary succeeded where both the Czechs and the Poles suffered defeat and failure. In less than two decades Hungary has been transformed into a prospering and — as far as possible within the framework ol a mediaeval empire — liberal state, based on the strengthening of its middle class. Radical econonr с reform accomplished what neither revolt nor attempts at national democratization could. Consequently; Hungary has become the first province in the empire where, by law, two or more cand.dates are required to stand in each election, where there ,s an essentially open border with a capitalist state, where censorship has been reduced to a minimum and every citizen has the legal right to travel abroad, and where there are neither emigration problems, nor food crises, nor queues for consumer goods. Hungary has demonstrated that liberalization is possible w itbin the mediaeval empire, and has offered herself as a model for the rest of the empire to follow. No more than that can be expected of ber. In the final analysis, she is a tiny country, with her own problems, frightened of her own success, and not daring to dream about seriously- influencing the empire. In no way, can Budapest pretend to the role of a second, reformist, centre of the empire, competing for influence with Moscow. Warsaw, on the other hand, is a different matter. Poland has always been the key country of Eastern Europe. If Poland were to follow Hungary, and, in addition to this, were to enter into a kind of alliance with Hungary, utilizing Hungary's experience to strengthen her own middle class, a second, reformist, centre of the empire could become a reality. It could act as a magnet to the whole western flank of the empire and as a signal for the rebirth of the whole Eastern European middle class, including the middle ciass of the imperial centre. In other words, Poland could такс Leont'ev's nightmare come true. Tor this to happen, the peoples on the empire's Western fringes must first and foremost understand the main lesson of their struggle for liberation: that the path to national liberalization, and ultimately to the ndependence of Waisaw, Prague, Bucharest and Sofia, lies through the liberalization of Moscow, through successful — and irreversible — Soviet reform. If the Poles do manage to achieve liberalization, it's because the Hungarians have already shown them how it can be done within the mediaeval system. But the recognition of this fact by the peoples of Eastern Europe is, by itself, not enough to transform Leont'ev's nightmare into reality. It is naive to expect Poland s mL.tary government to be capable of a Hungarian-style initiative, ''hey have neither the authority, nor the resources, nor even the necessary backing of the people, to break with command economy. he West, however, could offer Poland what its current government lacks. Here, too, as in the case of trade with Russia discussed earlier, the situation demands a well thought-out Western strategy. A 'mini- Marshall Plan' for Poland predicated on the condition that she go the Hungarian way would be analogous to the suggestion to maximize Soviet —American trade on condition that corporations deal directly with each other. Also, as before, it could by no means be called a political ultimatum It would involve only the natural desire of creditors to receive what is due to them and help the borrower to avoid bankruptcy. It would be based solely on the desire to support radical reform within the Soviet system, shared — if we are to believe their own declaiations — by both the national leadership in Moscow and Richard P:pes n Cambridge (judging from his last book).6 Sovietological liberals are also well disposed toward reform In any event, they would certainly wish to avoid the unprecedented crisis predicted by Timothy Colton if reform should fail 7 What is there to prevent both liberal and conservative sovietologists — Pipes and Colton >n this instance — from sinking their ideological differences in favour of a concrete and practical opportunity to avert a major catastropne — the 'Year 2000"? The Mediaeval System s Resources Of course, to Pipes and Colton, (as well as to American politicians) tht 'Year 2000' can hardly be more than an abstraction. They wouldn't take seriously Veche's reader mail or Solzhenitsyn's diabolerie. They probablv never heard of Shimanov's strategy and Emel'ianov's tactics. After all, there can be no shortage of elevator operators in America who in their leisure time prophesize the imminence of Armageddon Having been reared under a modern system of values, experts naturally have difficulties to perceive the role ideology plays in a pre-modern state. The very idea of the USSR as a mediaeval state is completely alien to them They will probably ask me the same questions about this book as the critics asked about The Russian New Right: How many supporters of the Russian Idea are there in the Soviet Union? How many of them are nfluenUal in the court circles in Moscow? I don't know, I'll tell them. Nobody knows. Then they'll turn away, shrugging th< ir shoulders n bewilderment, totally convinced that Shimanov is just a lunatic and the plans of the Russian Idea for its 'Year 2000' are die delusions. These same questions, however, could have been asked about the Bolsheviks at the bej/nning of the twentieth century. Then, as now, such statistical reasoning is irrelevant to the matter at hand. How many supporters d: I the Bolshev js have, say, a decade before their shattering v.ctory in 1917? Very few — far fewer than the Russian New Light has today. Moreover, the Bolshev ts had no one in influential court circles. Yet they won. Why? Statistics cannot answer this question. In 1908, the prediction of a Bolshev к victory would have been unthnkable using statistical methods. However, from the point of view of the hypothesis that l;es at the core of this book, the Bolsheviks' victory is easily explained: they were the single group in Russia at the t me possessing a genu le alternative ideology capable of saving the empire from collapse at the moment of its 'systemic' cnsis. The fact that such an alternative ideoiog5' emerged within the mediaeval empire as it stood on the threshold of a 'systemic crisis is at least as ;important as any statistical calculations. In a pre-modern system, the role of 'deology differs significantly from its role in a modern secularized state — if only because the nature of such a system is essentially rehgious, however scientifically it chooses to explain itself to the world To speak about a religious system solely in terms of statistical arguments is, at the very least, na've. We have seen how Russian autocracy moves out of its crises by means of 'regime changes', accompanicd by the r religious-cultural equivalents, 'denomination changes' It was exactly this kind of denomination change' that the Bolsheviks were preparing for the empire at the beginning of the twentieth century to enable it to survive its 'systemic' crisis. It is also this kind of 'denomination chang< that today's Russian Idea is preparing foi the empire as the current millennium draws to a close. This is where ts real danger lies, not in the number of its adherents in the Soviet Union or patrons in the Kremlin. I understand how much more attractive Pipess recommendation simply to pressure the empire until it begins to burst at the seams, or Brzezinski's call for unrelenting geopolitical confrontation, sound to conventional politicians. They don't want to have to bother with anything tricky like 'regime changes' or denomination changes'. The traditional approaches are Si.nple and familiar. In essence, Pipes and Brzezinski are calling 011 American policy to put the same pressure on the Soviet empire as World War I put 011 the tsarist empire. The simpler a recommendation, the more seductive it is Aren t the empire's resources limited0 Won't its rulers face a choice between guns and butter as a result of Western pressure? Driven to the wall, they will at some point be forced to decide whether to build new rockets and completely depuve the population of meat, thus running the risk of provok. rg riots and undermining then own legitimacy At some point, Pipes calculates, they will have to choose meat, unless they want to commit political suicide. Thus the problem will be solved. If we can't win a nuclear war, what remains is to win the nuclear peace. It is so natural. The main ttiing is to win. There is only one thing wrong with this reasoning, the pressure of World War I did not give rise to reform in tsarist Russia, but to a garrison-state and Communism — i.e., to that very 'regime change" and 'denomination change' that Pipes is now fighting. Pipes's recommendation doesn't take nto account that ideology is also a resource for a mediaeval system, and, indeed, its most powerful resource. Suppose that, under a post-dictatorial ideology, the empire's rulers, in order to provide the population with meat, are required to produce 250 million tons of grain a year or make massive grain purchases from the Umted States. Under the alternative dictatorial ideology- with its spiritual and ascetic values' which the Russian Idea would offer in the event of a 'systemic' crisis, the empire would not need to produce even 100 million tons of grain, or buy from abroad, because this deology doesn't require the populace to be fed meat at all, because it is in principle vegetarian. In 1953, forty years after the Bolshevik counter-reform, the production of meat 111 Russia had not even attained the level it was at in 1913. The imperative of national survival successfully replaced meat — for a quarter of a century. Dictatorial ideology turned asceticism into a patriotic virtue and consumption into a national sin. No spontaneous riots were recorded. The dictatorial regime's legitimacy was not subjected to doubt until after the death of the dictator. I11 other words, the rulers of the mediaeval empire will never end up faced with the fataf choice becween rockets and meat postulated by Pipes. Their real choice at the point of a 'systemic' crisis will be something completely d'tferent: between a post-dictatorial denomination, which forced them to triple meat production after the dictator's death, and ts opposite, a vegetarian ideology of dictatorship, which would allow them to concentrate all the system's resources on rocket production. Thus nuclear peace is as unwinnaole as nuclear war, and che logic of P pes and Brzezinski collapses Orthodox marxism has been exhausted as an ideological resource for the system, just as the ideology of tsarism was exhausted at the beginning of the twentieth century. Alternative ideological resources are needed to enable the empire to survive a 'systemic' crisis. The Russian Idea is offering these resources for the 'Year 2000' just as the Bolsheviks offered theirs in 1917. That's where Bolshevism's true strength lay, and that's where the Russian Idea's true strength lies tooav. If sovietology fa'Is to comprehend the function of ideolog} in a pre-modern system and follows the log:c of Pipes or Brzezinski, the 'Year 2000' will catch the West napp1 ng, just as it was caught by the events of 1917. Must we forever be condemned to understand such things only in hindsight? This -ime h'ndsight mignt be too late — for all of us. Notes Martin F. Herz, ed Decline of the 'West?, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Georgetown University, 1978. p. 62. The ultimate irony of this fundamental sovietological postulate is that it looks rather like a carbon copy of a corresponding Soviet dogma, according to which the October Revolution has produced an unprecedented political body that, except for geography and a common heritage in the fine arts, has nothing to do with its sombre imper il past. I included several chapters about this unfortunate phenomenon in my book The Origins of Autocracy, an outline of which the reader will fine n my essay 'Flight from Theory', Slavic Review, Fall 1983. Alexander Yanov, The Drama of the Soviet 1960s: A Lost Reform, 'Notes on Terminology. Soviet Protestantism', pp. 127 — 30. See Yanov, Detente after Brezhnev, pp. 37 — 8. Survival Is Not Enough. Timothy J Colton, The Dilemma of Reform in the Soviet Union, CouncJ on Foreign Relations, 1984, pp. 78 — 9. Afterword The book was already set up when the word from Moscow came. Andrei D. Sakharov is tree from his internal exile. Did it last foi seven years• To thousands of Russians it seemed to last for ages. Sakharov's re-emergence in Moscow has been a miracle for them. Apart :rom being the highest authority on things Russian, Sakharov is the conscience of the nation. For lack of comparison it is rather hard to explain to outsiders. For this we have to strain our h The usual fate of Russian Jeffersons being what it is. Sakharov fully experienced ihe misery of exile, isolation and torture. It would seem rather natural for him to become as embittered and contemptuous of the state which did this as Solzhenitsyn became. It would seem logical if he agreed wilh Pipes that unless this brutal police state is pushed to the wall nothing good could ever be expected from it. It would seem reasonable for him to call on the West not to trust Gorbachev or, at least declare along with A. M. Rosenthal, the former executive editor of 7he New York Times, Mr Gorbachev is certainly a smoother chap than most of his predecessors but he has not touched the police nature of the Soviet state and has not even hinted at it. How could he' He is part of it and rules through it . . . Myself, I will wait until Mr Gorbachev arrests and tries the men who sent . Dr Sakharov into exile.' In other words, it would seem logical for Andrei Sakharov to condemn everything this book stands for Would he? The central premise of the book is that there are two Russias — in perennial and mortal opposition to each other. And because of this what seems natural, logical and reasonable to the extremist Russia of Solzhenitsyn must be unnatural, illogical and unreasonable for the other Russia. According to the extremist Russia and its Western fellow travellers, Gorbachev's reforms must be cancelled — by pressure, by disbelief, by Star Wars. According to the other Russia, it is vitally important for the West to see to it that the reforms succeed — if only to prevent the transformation of the USSR into a fascist nuclear monster. Which of these irreconcilably opposite stands would the Russian Jefferson take? If the premise of this book is correct, then, however embittered, Sakharov back in Moscow would say something like this: It s in the interests of the West that these reforms should succeed so that the Soviet Union can be a more stable partner. The West must not try to corner the Soviet Union. A cornered nation is always dangerous. And this is what Sakharov, in fact, said on 14 February, 1987. What he couldn't have sa. 1 publicly — a pre-modern state with a human face is still pre-modern — is perhaps this: It is time to start the de- Brezhnevizat on of world politics. It is imperative to return to the Khrushchev-Kennedy political agenda of 1963 brutally interrupted by the fatal shots in Dallas and the Brezhnevist coup in Moscow. For all his polish and courage, Gorbachev is a pre-modern politician. He needs guidance, not resistance. He needs someone n Washington who would be able to do for him what Kennedy had done for Khrushchev — to clear the way for the idea of a world safe for diversity. If it comes to that, it is not Gorbachev who should ask the West to support his bold effort to prevent a garrison state in Moscow, it is the West who should guide him into this — for all of us to survive in the nuclear age. Appendix Table 1 Soviet Meta-Ideology Dictatorial Era Sub-Ideology of National Communism Major Beliefs: Socialism as a new era ,n the history of mankind State ownership of the means of production — sole means of ending exploitation of man by man Paternalism (Father of the Fatherland) Inevitability of World War III Imperative of national survival Guns instead of butter Asceticism Isolationism and fortress mentality Total control over culture The permanent sharpening of the class struggle Revolutionary translormation of the World Post-Dictatorial Era Sub-Ideology of Soviet Protestantism Major Beliefs: Socialism as a new era in the history of mankind State ownership of the means of production — sole means of ending exploitation of man by man Collective leadership World War III is not inevitable Imperative of economic retorm Butter instead of guns Consumer satisfaction Detente with the West Cultural thaw No class struggle in soeialism Peaceful coexistence Table 2 Russia's Reformist Attempts and Their Outcomes Attempt of the 1550s — reversed by a counter-reform Attempt of the 1610s — faded into political stagnation Attempt of the 1680s — reversed by a counter-reform Attempt of the 1720s — faded into political stagnation Attempt of the 1760s — faded into political stagnation Attempt of 1801 — faded into political stagnation Attempt of the 1820s — reversed by a counter-reform Attempt of the 1860s — faded into political stagnation Attempt of 1879 — 80 — reversed by a counter-reform Attempt of 1905 Attempt of 1917 faded into political stagnation reversed by a counter-reform Attempt of the 1920s — reversed b> a counter-reform Attempt of the 1960s — faded into political stagnation Attempt of 1985 — ? Russia's Counter-reformist Dictatorships 1560-1584 1689-1725 1796-1801 1825-1855 1881-1894 1918-1921 1929-1953 т:) (КГ) (KI-) (КГ) (ЕГ) (КГ) IEV) (КГ; (КГ) Collapse Collapse R Reform CR Countcrreform KF European family Figure 1 Five Centuries of Russian History in One Chart Figure 2 Structure of Russia's Historical Cycles (6) National Leadership (5) Metropolitan Elites Party Professionals (7) ~Л 'Priesthood' (8) / \ (4) Middle Managerial Class / Central Economic Bureaucracy (9) \ (3) Worker and Peasant Elites (2) Professional Class (1) Liberal Intelligentsia / The Brezhnev (center-right) coalition: + (6) + (7) + (8) + (9) + (10) The alternative (center-left) reform coalition: (1) + (2) + (3) + (4) + (5) + (6) The alternative (right-wing) counterreform coalition: + (9) + (10) + (11) + (12) Military-Industrial Complex (10) \ The Russian New Right (11) \ Unskilled Workers and Peasants (12) Figure 3 The Political Structure of Soviet Society Index Afghanistan, 1, 6, 15, 41 Agurskii, Mikhail, 144, 145, 147, 152 Aksakov, Ivan, 20, 33, 35, 36, 39, 52, 93, 110, 141, 209, 219, 220, 224, 247, 259 Aksakov, Konstantin, 19, 21, 22, 27, 33, 46, 58, 72, 84, 168, 173-5, 183, 195,204 Alekseev, Mikhail, 115, 125 Alexander I, Emperor, 111, 215 Alexander II, Emperor, 215, 217, 221,279 Alexander III, Emperor, 13, 36, 55, 73, 78, 149, 215, 219, 221, 283 Allen, Richard 6, 8 Amalrik, Andrei, 14, 27 Andropov, Yuri, 126 Anti-Americanism, 107 — 9, 123 see also Western democracy Anti-semitism ('Anti-Zionism'), 12, 13, 33, 34, 39, 40, 42-4, 46, 48, 50, 98, 103, 129, 142-8, 161, 162, 213, 228, 229, 245, 246, 256-8 Antonov, Mikhail, 137-9, 146, 152, 174, 185, 190, 224, 228, 245, 268, 270, 271 Antonii, Bishop Volynskii, 62 Avvakum, Archpriest, 110 Bailey, George, 12 Belinskii, Vissarion, 30 Belorussians, 160 Berdiaev, Nikolai, xv, 5, 93, 96, 97, 102, 134, 248 Besanqxm, Alain, 60 Bestuzhev-Riumin, Konstantin, 131 Bezborodko, Aleksandr, 8 Biaier, Seweryn, 268—70 Black Hundreds', 42, 52, 55, 62, 63, 66, 87, 129, 137, 145, 159, 163, 190,213 see also Russian fascism Bogrov, Mordechai, 198, 202, 210-14, 225 Bolsheviks (Bolshevism), xiv, xvi, 2, 12, 34, 42, 44, 61, 66, 68, 69, 76, 84, 94, 95, 101, 202, 228, 265-7, 287, 289 Borisov, Vadim. 176, 177 Bormann, Martin, 254 Borodin, Leonid, 179, 231, 232 Bostunich, Grigoni, 48, 213 Bowling, John, 182 Brezhnev, Leonid, xi, 68, 72, 113, 117, 119, 120, 126, 271 Brzezinski, Zhigniew, 267 — 70, 277, 278, 288,289 Bukharin, Nikolai, 215 Bulgarin, Faddei, 182 Burnett, Frank, 3 Calvin, Jonn, 22, 23 Chaadaev, Petr, 5, 26, 182 Chalidze, Valerii, 27 Chalmaev, Viktor, 59, 105, 109-12, 114, 118, 163, 166, 174, 180, 181, 185, 190, 259, 260 Chamberlain, Neville, 6, 10 Charles V, Emperor, 8 Chernyshevskii, Nikolai, 26, 27, 49, 52, 53, 121 China, 5, 131, 136, 147, 152, 171, 232-4, 242, 245 Chivilikhin, Vladinnr, 125 Chuev, Feliks, 116 Churchill, Winston, 3 Cohn, Norman 2b2 Colton, Timothy, 70, 28b, 287 Constantinople, 36 — 8, 43, 150 'Cosmopolitanism', 42, 115, lib, 125, 136, 139, 141, 144, 159, 162, 185 Czechoslovakia, 107 Daniel', Iulii, 142 Danile\skii, Nikolai, 34-41, 53, 72, 128-33, 137-9, 149-51, 175, 176 247 Dement'ev Aleksandr, 114—18, 122, 125 Deng Xiao Ping, 171 Detente, 1, 2, 76, 1 19. 121, 130, 282 Djilas, Milovan, 94, 96, 102 'Doctor-poisoners', 42 see also Anti-semii'sm Dol'nik, Solomon, 98 Dostoevskii, Feodor, 93, 100, 137, 149, 167, 239 Dunlop, John, 59. b2 65, 66, 74, 75, 78, 79, 83 93-7, 100, 102. 105, 159, 180, 271 Efros. Anatolii 107 Einstein. Albert, 143 ЕтеГапоч . Nikola. 256 —1>3, 271, 28b Engels, Friedrich 150 155 Evtushenko, Evgenii, 252, 253 Fallows, James, 3 Faulkner, William, 134, 151 Fetisov. A A , 83-5, 152 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 33 Fitzgerald, F. Scott 199 France, 38, 39, 195 Frenkel, Natan, 223 Fritsch, Theodore, 34 Galanskov, Yurii, 142 Garn. Jake, 3 Germany, 38, 39 Germogen. Bishop Saratovskn, 62 Germogen, Patriarch, 111 Gogol, Nikolai 30, 167 Goedsche, Hermann, 34 Golitsyn, Vasil;i 9 Gorbachev, Mikhail, xvi, 9, 71 127, 244, 248, 256, 261, 266, 270, 271, 274, 276, 279 Gorky Maxim, 62 Gorskii, V., 178, 170 Gradovskii, Aleksandr, 27 Grimm Jakob, 33 Hammer, Darell, 159 Herzen Alexander, 26, 27, 49, 53, 107, 182, 202, 277-9 Heydrich, Reinhard, 48 Himmler, Heinrich, 48, 254 Hitler, Adolf, 13, 14. 83, 158, 235 252-4 Hobbes, Thomas, 22, 23 Hofstadter, Richard, 23 Hough, Jerry, xi xii, xiii, 73, 12b Hungary, 102, 171, 245, 282, 285 Ivan 111, the Great, 21b Ivan IV, the Terrible, 5, 72, 111, 112, 182, 216, 217. 2b9 Ivanov, Anatolii, 113 115, 125 lvanov (Skuratov), Anatolii 57 148 iaruzelski, Wojciech. 218 Kadar. Janos. 171 Karavatskii, Boris, 98 Katkov, Mikhail, 174 Kennan. George, 2b4, 2b9 270 Kerenskii, Aleksandr, 215 KGB, 146-8, 179, 244 Khaibulm Archdeacon Varsonofn 145, 147, 154, 224 Khomeini, Avatollah Ruhollah, xiv, 277 Khomiakov, Aleksei, 19, 33, 128, 139 Khrushchev Nikita, 4, 7, 102, 117, 171, 215, 217, 219. 270-2. 276, 279, 280 Kireevskii, Ivan, 19 Kireevskii, Petr, 19, 33 Kirilenko, Andrei, 68 Kirkpatrick, Jeanne, 170 Kommunist, 118, 120 Knntinent, 225 Korsakov, F„ 176, 177 Koshelev, Aleksandr, 19 Kosygin, Aleksei, 68 Kotoshikhin, Aleksei, 68 Kozhinov, Vadim, 57, 231 Kurbskii, Andrei, 175 Lanshchikov, Anatolii, 213 Laplace, Pierre Simon, 45 Laqueur, Walter, 44, 48, 126, 213 Ixnin, Vladimir, 8, 9, 45, 67, 68, 71, 111, 112, 118, 121, 122, 138, 153, 174, 175, 186-90, 199, 202, 238, 245, 267, 269,277 Leontiev, Konstantin, 34 — 8, 54, 58, 69, 72, 82, 118, 125, 128, 149, 189, 195, 196, 207, 239, 247, 259, 283-5 Literaturnuia gazeta, 1 21 Ixibanov, Mikhail, 105 — 8, 112, 114, 116, 124, 135, 139, 163 Loyola, Ignatius, xii Luther, Martin, xii Lvov, V. N., 79 MacMaster, Robert E., 150 Maksimov, Vladimir, 54, 209 Malashkin, Sergei, 125 Markov, Nikolai, 44, 45, 48 Marx, Karl, 8, 31, 150, 229 Marxism and Marxists, xiv, 19, 43, 44, 53-5, 57, 64, 67, 68, 72, 74, 75, 79, 85, 86, 106, 110-14, 138, 173, 179, 228, 238, 242, 243 Melent'ev, Yurii, 118-21, 123, 126 Mensheviks, 61 Meyerhold, Vsevolod, 107 Middle class, 171, 216, 266, 275-7, 280-5 Mikhailov, Vasilii, 54, 161, 253 Mikhalkov, Sergei, 61 Mihukov, Pavel, 27, 50, 51, 57, 87 Moldavians, 161 Molodaia gvardia, 59, 82, 105, 106, 109, 112-22 Molodoi kommunist, 87, 182 Monas, Sidney, 87 Moskovskii sbornik, 231 Moskva, 213 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 2 Muscovite Rus', 7, 8, 15, 269, 273 Mussolini, Benim, 96 N'adezhdin, Nikolai, 30 Nash, sovremennik, 113 NTeo-Marxism and neo-Marxisls, 53, 54 Nicholas I, Emperor, 30, 55, 72, 73, 215 Nicholas II, Emperor, 199, 221 Nikon, Patriarch, 111 Nikonov, Anatolii, 113, 117 Novalis (Hardenberg, Friederich von), 33 Novyi mir, 114-17, 119, 122, 125, 252 Odinzgoev, Yu. M„ 46, 47, 54, 210, 260 Ogonek, 113, 115-17, 125 Oktiabr', 115 Osipov, Vladimir, 129, 130. 137, 139-41, 144, 145, 148-51, 154, 155, 166, 179, 185, 224, 231, 232, 244, 258-60 Ottoman Empire (Turkey), 84, 132, 149 Paieologus, Moris, 201 Palievskii, Petr, 231 Paramonov, Boris, 57, 58, 209 Parliamentarism fas perceived by Russian nationalists), 12, 20, 23, 26, 33-5, 42, 51-3, 91, 93, 96, 172, 204, 229 see also Western democracy Parvus, (Gelfond, Izrail'), 188-90, 212, 225 Paul I, Emperor, 55, 72 Peasant commune, 25 Pestel Pavel 93 Peter I, F.mperor, 5, 8 9, 72 73. 112 174, 175 215-17, 2o9 Petersburg empire, 7, 8. 15, 251, 266, 2o9, 273 274 Petro\-Agatov, A A 98 Petukhov. Gennad.i 154 Pinskii Leonid, 27 Pipes, Richard, xi, \in, 126, 264, 267-70. 278, 286-9 Polianskii, Dmitrii, 122 Political change in Russia/USSR, 2, 5, 7, 15, 32. 67-9, 71, 73, 74, 270, 274, 288 Political crises in Russia/l'SSR, 8, 9, 32, 52,71, 109. 273 regime crises, 251, 255, 256, 26 273, 274, 276 svstemic crises, 76, 251, 255, 25o 259. 266, 272-9 Pomerants Grigorw, 27 Populists 26 Pospelovsky, Dmitry 145 147, 149 Prokof'ev, Aleksandi 125 Proskurin Petr, 125 Purishkevich, Vladimir, 13, 45, 47. 69 Pushkin, Aleksandr, 13. 30 Radionov, V., 148 Rasputin Gngorii, 214, 223. 226 Reagan Ronald, 3, 8, 12 Rosenberg, Alfred 253 Rostow, Eugene, 1 Rozanov, Vasuh, 69 Russian fascism. 52. 55, 59, 61, 62, 74. 97, 163, 246, 252, 255. 35b, 2b0 see also 'Black Hundreds Russian Idea fan deology and a political doctrine of Russian imperial nationalism), xv, xvi, 11, 19-24, 27. 30-47, 50-9, b3 —9, 72- b. 78, 80-8, 91, 101 103, 129, lbb, 174, 177 186, 195. 204, 206, 209, 210, 217, 223, 225, 229, 23b, 243-7, 251, 254, 255 259, 261, 270, 273, 280, 287-9 Russian imperial nationalism (.political and cultural movement x.i —xvi, 1. 2, 4t> 56. 57, 78. 85-7, 125. 133- 150, 157 159, 246, 254 liberal, 80, 81, 128, 129 141 143, 144, 147, 148, 150, 162, 164 169,223-5,229,231,232, 246 imperial-isolationist. 80, 103 157 fascist x\, 81, 128, 129, 161, 207 225 see also Black Hundreds Russian New Right the (nationalist ideology and movement in the USSR) " 10-14. 19. 53. 54, 61, 62. 68, 81, 105, 115. 124, 125, 130. 133, 147, 148, 153, 166, 169, 178, 180 185, 190 198, 201, 225, 243,258 259,265-73,275. 277-80 287 Russian Orthodox Renaissance 137, 228, 237. 242 Russian-Sov let political regimes dictatorships (counter-reforms), 4, 5. 9 11, 14, 15. 32, 35. 36. 38, 45, 52, 55 60-6 68-78. 123, 124, 148, 149, 163 164, 170, 175 182, 215, 217. 268-70, 274-6 280, 283, 284, 288. 289 reformist regimes, 4, 5 10, 11, 14, 15.32, 35. 45, 68, 175 216, 217, 168. 274-6, 279 regimes of pol deal stagnation, 4-6, 9, 15, 35, 72, 73. 79, 124, 129, 215 256, 260, 268. 274, 275, 279 Russkoe delo. 38 Russkoe samosoznanie 253 Russophiles see Molodaia gvardia and Shimanov Gennadn Sado, Mikhail, 98 Sakharov, Andrei, xi, 27, 142, 144, 238 Samann, Yurii, 19, 79 Santavana, George 54 Scamniel. Michael, 61 Schleiermacher, Fnedrich, 33 Semanov, Sergei, 116 — 18, 120 Shafarevich, Igor', 142 Sharapov, Sergei, 38-42, 45, 47, 53, 67, 68, 72, 73, 84, 144, 174, 224, 239, 247, 260 Shauro, Vasilii, 119, 121, 126, 127 Shcherbatov, Vasilii, 175 Shevtsov, Ivan, 121, 137, 143, 152 Shimanov, Gennadii, 179, 225, 229, 231-48, 253, 254, 258-62, 267, 271, 272, 286, 287 Shipler, David, 253, 254 Shipov, Dmitrii, 79, 196, 197, 219, 220 Shragin, Boris, 27 Shultz, George, 6, 8 Shundik, Nikolai, 125 Siniavsky, Andrei, 27, 98 — 100, 107, 114, 142 Skobelev, Mikhail, 38, 39, 53, 128, Skurlatov, Valerii, 83 Skvorecky, Josef, 151 Slavophilism and Slavophiles, 19-41, 49-54, 58, 79-86, 91, 101, 105, 131, 137-41, 149, 151, 169, 172, 174, 219, 221, 225, 229, see also Russian Idea; Russian imperial nationalism Smirnov, Sergei, 125 Sofronov, Anatolii, 116, 125 Soloukhin, Vladimir, 83 Solov'ev, Vladimir, 27, 33, 49, 50, 52, 55, 93, 134, 251 Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, xi, 3, 6, 12, 19, 20, 22, 26, 53, 58, 59, 81, 83-7, 110, 114, 139-45, 166-75, 178-87, 190-229, 236-40, 244, 246, 248, 254, 258-61, 286 Sorskii, Nil, 238, 245 Soviet empire, 8, 15, 72, 273 — 5 Sovietology and sovietologists, xi, xii, 60, 62, 64, 66, 69, 73, 74, 245, 255-75, 278-83, 286, 289 Spinoza, Baruch, 138 Stalin, Joseph, 41, 42, 83, 111, 121, 136, 139, 140, 217, 224, 269, 271, 281, 284 Starr, Frederick, 77 Stasiulevich M. M., 27, 50 Stolypin, Petr, xvi, 9, 198, 202, 203, 205, 213-9, 265, 266, 269, 273, 276 Strakhov, Nikolai, 131 Suslov, Mikhail, 68 Tetenov, Nikolai, 253 TiQtchev, Feodor, 30, 35 Tkachev, Petr, 93, 155 Tolstoy, Lev, 13, 167 Tower, John, 3 Trotsky, Lev, 45, 188 Trubetskoi, Sergei, 27, 50 — 2, 55 Trufanov, Sergei, 62 Tvardovskii, Aleksandr, 125 Ukranians, 160 Vagin, Evgenii, 99, 100 Veche, 105, 128-33, 136-40, 144-55, 162, 169, 175, 181, 182, 209, 223, 231, 244-6, 258, 286 Vestnik russkogo khristianskogo dvizhenia, 178 Viazemskii, Petr, 30 Vikulov, Sergei, 113, 115, 125 Vishnevskaia, Yulia, 179 Vokrug sveta, 113 Volzhskii, A., 40 Voronin, Sergei, 125 Vostorgov, I. I., 62 Western democracy (the West, as perceived by Russian nationalists), 12, 20, 24 — 6, 37, 39, 80, 84, 85, 93, 102, 119, 132, 138, 163, 170-4, 183, 186, 232-4, 239, 241, 244, 245, 253, 267,277 see also Anti-Amcricanism; Parliamentarism Westernism and Westermzers (Russian liberals), xii, 26, 39, 42, 49, 79, 80, 96. 99, 109 White, Horace, 22 Wolff, Karl, 48 Yakovlev Aleksandr, 120-3, 126 Yakovlev Nikolai ol Yazykov, Nikolai, 182 Zakrutkin Vitalii 115, 1 Zemlia, 148 Zhukovskii Vasilii, 30 27 SOUTH FULTON 947 ж 085 YANOV SFB Yanov, Alexander The Russian challenge and the year 2000 RDD24 fl bbEID Alexander Yanov is an exile from Brezhnev's Russia. Since 1975 he has lived in the U'n ed States where he taught Russian history and Sov it po tics at Berkeley and Michigan, and has published a number of books on these subjects. He is at present Professor of Political Science at the City Ur versity of New York. Jacket design by Richard Boxall Printed in Great Britain From the Afterword it is time to start the de-Brezhnevization of world politics. It is imperative to return to the Khruschev Kennedy political agenda of 1963 brutally interrupted by the fatal shots in Dallas and the Brezhnevist coup ih Moscow For all his polish and courage, Gorbachev is a pre-modern politician He needs guidance, not resistance. He needs someone ;n Washington who would be able to do for him what Kennedy had done for Khrushchev - to clear the way for the idea of a world safe for diversity. If it comes to that, it is not Gorbachev who should ask the West to support his bold effort to prevent a garrison state in Moscow, it is the West who should guide him into this - for all of us to survive in the nuclear age. Yanov forces us to experience the USSR from inside. His book will make it possible for Westerners to understand the Soviet system with the same depth, nuance and complexity with whicn we understand our own. He shows us the deep currents that underlie Gorbachev's drive for reform, and the enormous obstacles that resist it. This is the most exciting book about the USSR to appear on Western shores since Medvedev's Let History Judge' Marshall Berman This is a brilliant piece of the modern Russian historical criticism tanova vision of the Russ-an past merges with a prophetic insight into unknown future and his splendidly written book shows that the controversy cannot be resolved by means of a partisan approach, though it may find its resolution spontaneously, in the process of development of one's historical consciousness.' Alexander Piatigorsky Basil Blackwell 9780631153344 22 g/8063U&i.344 ■■ -03 '97:29 Oxford and New York IV Finally, if for all these reasons the Dissident Right really manages to develop in the direction of mutual accommodation and adaptation and. eventually merges with ts establishment sister, as happened in the last century, such an ideological evolution can be described n more or less strict terms. For simplicity's sakeplet's assume that the Russian Idea evolves through three main phases: from a liberal nationalism that confronts the regime (L-Nationalism). to an isolationist nationalism that strives for co-operation with the nationalist faction within the establishment (1) Rejection — along with 'Communist totalnaiian sm' — of the Western parliamentary model. Belief that a special and primary place belongs to Russia The definition of this 'real liberation as the transfer of freedom from the sphere of political guarantees against the arbitrary use of power, to that of the struggle of absolute good against absolute evil (so linking it not with the tradition of promoting cultural and institutional limitations on power, but rather with that of [1] have been reproached of late for supposedly crossing over from the Slavophile camp into that of the Westernizers, entering into an alliance with liberals and the like. These personal reproofs only give me occasion to pose now the following question, one of a completely non-personal character: where is that Slavophile camp in which I could have and was supposed to remain today located? Who are its representai /es? What and where do they preach? Which scholarly, literary and poli.'cal periodicals are expressing and developing 'the great and fertile Slavophile idea'? It's enough to pose this question to see immediately that Slavophilism is at present a non-existent phenomenon . . . and that the Slavophile idea is not being represented nor developed by anyone, if we don't count as its development those views and Lendencies which we find in today's 'patriotic' press. Even with all the distinctions made between their various tendencies, from pro-serfdom to populism and from tooth-gnashing obscurantism to reckless mockery, the organs of this press adhere to one common principle — an elemental nationalism, lacking in moral substance, which they take for and pass off as true [2] [Translator's note: The Russian term meshchanstvo, translated here as 'shopkeepers' (as in Napoleon's description of England as 'a Ration of shopkeepers'), is taken from the name of one of the estates into which the population of tsarist Russia was divided. As now used in the Soviet Union, it connotes a narrow, conventional, money-grubbing mentality — not unlike 'babbitry' in the American context.] [3] 'A nation resettled into cities is doomed to extinction.'32 'All patriotism is inseparably linked to love for the land, for the sower and protector of the land, the peasant. All cosmopolitanism is equally inseparably linked to hatred of the peasantry — the creator and preserver of national traditions, the national morality and culture.' 'The peasant is the most morally unique type (M. Lobanov).'33 From this viewpoint, the hopelessly urbanized West is doomed, but for Russia, 'where everyone has, if not a peasant mother, then at least a peasant grandmothe: , all is not yet lost. In Russia, reverse migration, or the ex-urbanization of society is still possible. [4] [Translator's note: The bigoted stereotype being reflected here sees the Germans of Lomonosov's time as the ones who nepotistically' dominated Russian scientific and cultural life. Today it is the Jews who are seen in this role.] [5] [Translator's note: uzly. the plural of uzel, roughly meaning a 'cluster' or knot' of activity centred around a particular event. Solzhenitsyn's narration .n Red Wheel moves from one such cluster' of actions focused around a particular point of time to the next, quite discrete cluster'.] [6] [Translator's note: The Muscovite Assembly of the Lard' a medieval Russian assembly called together by the tsar in the manner of a medieval parliament ] [7] [Translator's note: The Belomor canal (The White Sea canal in the extreme arctic north of Russia.) was constructed by prisoners.]articukting its nterests. In brief, for all his sins, Stolypin opened for the country a window on to political modernization, which in the Russian context means reform. His rivals at both ends of the political spectrum, be it Purishkevich or Lenin, would have (indeed, Lenin did") shut this window off for decades to come, which means counter-reform.i agination a bit What would contemporary Americans feel if, say, Thomas Jefferson re-emerged among them, alive and well? Wouldn't they await with trepidation his judgement on whatever they do or say or write 1 So was I awaiting with trepidation Sakharov's judgement on the central issue of this book — should the West ally with Solzhenitsyn and his followers and thus ruin Gorbachev's reforms, or should it ally with reformers and support their desperate endeavour
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