See, for example, A. Solzhemtsyn, 'Nashi Pluralisty' ['Our Pluralists'], Vestnik russkogo khristianskogo dvizheniia, No. 139, 1983.
Novoe russkoe slo\>o, 18 June 1978.
M. Agurskii in Novyi zhurnal (No. 118, 1975).
John B. Dunlop, The Faces of Contempurary Russian Nationalism, Prineeton University Press, 1984.
John B. Dunlop, 'The Many Faces of Contemporary Russian Nationalism' Survey, Summer 1979, v. 24, No. 3, p 108.
5
A Witness for the Defence?
John Dunlop, one of the most devoted fellow-travellers of the Russian New Rignt, wrote a book entitled The Faces of Contemporary Russian Nationalism. It is permeated with sympathy for the Russian Idea and sets itself the goal of defending its aspirations before the American administration (the book contains recommendations to the government) and public Of course, it follows the fellow-travellers standard methodology in dividing contemporary Russian nationalists into Menshcviks' and 'Bolsheviks' For the former, however, Dunlop has coined a new term vozrozhdentsy (from vozrozhdenie: renaissance), while the latter he just refers to as 'National Bolsheviks'. He freely admits that
the similarities between National Bolshevism and fascism are striking: a strong impulse toward deification of the nation; the desire for a strong totalitarian state; a powerful leadership impulse . . . ; a belief in the necessity of the existence of an elite; a cult of discipline, particularly discipline of the youth; heroic vitalism; an advocacy of industrial and military might . . . ; a celebration of the glories of the past; and a militant, expansionist dynamic.1
Based on this, Dunlop concludes, very logically, that, 'in National Bolshevism we have an essentially fascist phenomenon, a radical right movement in a state still adhering nominally to a radical left ideology.'2
Although the whole point of his book is to prove that: the vozrozhdentsy critically differ from the fascist National Bolsheviks, Dunlop none the less admits that there exists no Great Wall of China' between them: 'the two tendencies are often able to recognize a communality of interest, as in Solzhenitsyn's generally approving comments, contained in his literary memoes, on Viktor Chalmaev and the Molodaia gvardia [Young guard] orientation of the late sixties.'3 In general, from a political standpoint, the difference between the vozrozhdentsy and the National Bolsheviks consists, in Uunlop's opinion, in the fact that the former possess a mass base of support (having in'mind 'their close ties to the fifty-million-member Russian Orthodox Church'), whereas 'the National Bolsheviks would seem to be better positioned actually to assume power.'4 Dunlop thinks that. 'An implementation of their ideas would probably lead to what French sovietologist Alain Besani;on has called a "pan-Russian police and military empire" A military dictatorship directed by a |Unta or a party dictatorship (with the CPSU becoming a fascist-style Russ an Party").'5
Such a tuin of events I call Russian counter-reform: one of those periodic catastrophes ;n Russian history mentioned earlier, to which Russia if particularly susceptible in an era of historical decline. The extremist tendencies of both degenerate Utopias, that of Russian Marxism and of the Russian Idea, would combine into a single fascist monster, capable of restoring not only mass terror in Russia, but also the threatening pre-war atmosphere of the 1930s, full of hysteria and uncertainty. In a nuclear age, such global hysteria could, in the light of the perpetual nuclear arms race, last indefii itely, destroying the whole foundation of international relations and, in essence, of civilization as well. It is this potential for just such a calamity before the year 2000 to which all my books are addressed. If I could persuade at least one Ameucan scholar to perceive this threat as I do, I should be well pleased with my efforts. So far, however, that pleasure has been denied me.
Though Dunlop describes the contours of this threat very realistically, he fails to perceive the threat itself. In fact, he argues that such a turn of events would be highly desirable: 'if the National Bolsheviks were to come to power, they would be much more vulnerable to the arguments of the intellectually more sophisticated vozrozhdentsy, with whom they have numerous ideational and emotional links ... A possible scenario, therefore, would be a brief National Bolshevik interregnum followed by a vozrozhdencts period of rule.'6
1 hus, Dunlop's cheerful scenario promises us a happy ending. A revolution occurs in Moscow — with, one must assume, all the attendant bloodshed and strife of civil war that accompanies revolution. Somehow, as a result, a fascist Russian Party takes power Yet, having proven strong enough to crush everything in theii path to power, the hawks suddenly defer to the arguments of the 'intellectually more sophisticated' doves and voluntarily hand over to them the power they have won From ihis moment a golden age begins. This scenario has one obvious drawback, we have only Mr. Dunlop's word for it. I shall not at this point dwell on the fact that the vozrozhdentsy have plenty of their own hawks, as we will see later, or that both factions of the Russian New Right are permeated by a spirit of fascism. Indeed, Dunlop himself admits that the vozrozhdentsy 'have numerous ideational and emotional links' with the fascists and, if for only that reason, it is difficult to accept that they are as polit ically virtuous as he assumes. But leaving that aside, what chance would they really have of wresting control from a 'National Bolshevik' Russian Party that had just seized power?
Did the Russian Mensheviks have any chance of wresting power from the Bolsheviks after October 1917? Were not the Mensheviks also 'intellectually more sophisticated' and did they not have 'numerous ideational and emotional links' with the Bolsheviks? Did this then make the Bolsheviks 'vulnerable to their arguments'? Hardly. Didr t the Mensheviks — precisely because of their ideological closeness — end up among the first victims of the Bolshevik dictatorship? It could not have been any other way. In all revolutions, without exception, the extremists, after having seized power, have always decimated and terrorized first and foremost their closest rivals — those most closely related to them politically. So the Jacobins did with the Girondists, the Bolsheviks with the Mensheviks, the Stalinists with the Bolsheviks, and Khomeini extremists with Khomeini moderates. There has never been an instance — in revolutions in Asia or in Europe — where extremists, having established their dictatorship, suddenly turned around and voluntarily handed power over to moderates.
There is a wealth of documentary evidence which testifies to the genuine hatred of Dunlop's National Bolsheviks for the vozrozhdentsy. Some of these documents will be presented later. For the time being, it is worth citing two cases. Nikolai Yakovlev, whom Dunlop counts as a leading National Bolshevik,7 both wrote a book entitled 'The CIA vs. the USSR' (in the opinion of Michael Scammel, Solzhenitsyn's biographer, 'a textbook of the cold war which strives to show that . . . all unofficial literature and art [in the USSR] is the product of CIA infiltration and manipulation'8), and spoke out as the most frenzied of Solzhenitsyn's 'academic' persecutors. Sergei Mikhalkov, also according to Dunlop a National Bolshevik, was among the initiators of a smear campaign against Solzhenitsyn in the Soviet press. Nothing these people have written gives us the slightest cause to suppose that once they had taken power they would be 'vulnerable to the arguments'