of the Orthodox doves.
Thus, the logical conclusion to be drawn from Dunlop's book is irreconcilable with his declared intention to defend the noble anti- Communist aspirations of the Russian New Right. His painstaking documentation is evidence of iust the oppos'te — the unprecedented threat postid by the New Right. For, if having seized power in Moscow, the National Bolsheviks whom Dunlop himself describes as open fascists remain in power, the West will be confronted for the first time in history with a fascist nuclear superpower.
Even though Dunlop's thesis doesn't stand up to close scrutiny, the scenario for a Russian counter-reform he describes — albeit unsuspectingly — is truly alarming. For the first time an American scholar, a product of Western training, has presented his readers wilh a possible scenano for Russia's future (in accordance with all the standards of modern political science) of a kind which before Dunlop no one, aside from myself, had tried to introduce into the currency of Western political thought — a scenario for counter-reform, something which neither the conservatives nor the liberals 111 the Western sovietologieal debate wanted to hear about.
As for John Dunlop, a man who sincerely believed he was speaking as a witness for the defence of the Russian Idea in the court of history, I hope the reader is now satisfied that in reality he is taking the stand in the opposite capacity, as a witness for the prosecution.
Notes
Dunlop, op. cit , pp. 256 — 7
Ibid., p. 257.
Jbid., p. 264.
Ibid., p. 265.
Ibid., p. 262.
Ibid, p 265. The reader may encounter some difficulties in connection with Dunlop's classifications (.inasmuch as the single dividing line between vozrozhdentsy and National Bolsheviks in his scheme of things is profession of the Russian Orthodox faith). How would we categorize, say, the 'Union of Christian Socialists', first mentioned by Maxim Gorkv ('Novaia zhizn" ['New Life'], 20 May 1918)? On the one hand, this organization touted the physical and moral supremacy of the Aryan race and its slogan was 'Antisemites of the world unite!' From this standpoint, it would have to be counted among the ranks of the National Bolsheviks. On the other hand, all the members of this union were Russian Orthodox, which obliges anyone adhering to Dunlop's system of classification to group them with the vozrozhdentsy The participation of such obvious vozrozhdentsy as Antonn, Bishop Volynskii. Gcrmogen, Bishop Saratovskii, Ilidor (Sergei Trufanov) and I. I. Vostorgov in the Black Hundreds in no way helps us resolve this problem. Nor, moreover, does the fact that the
Black Hundreds' 'emblems and banners are kept in churches, so it's clear to everybody that the Holy Orthodox Church fully approves of and blesses the lofty patriotic sacred cause of the Union of the Russian People and takes its activity under its own protection'. I am quoting this from Walter Laqueur's Russia and Germany (p. 85), which Dunlop, judging by his book, has also read. Nevertheless, this did not prevent him from lclud. lg all Russian Orthodox adherents of the Russian Idea in the camp of the vozrozhdentsy, whose future 'rule' he portrays as a victory of good over evil.
Ibid., pp. 261-2.
Michael Scammel, Solzhenitsyn: A Biography, W. W. Norton, 1984.
6
The Western Debate and the Russian New Right
The time has come to turn to the Western debate on Russia and see what our study of the degeneration of the Russian Idea has to add Does the historical approach toward Russia that lies at the foundation of this study strengthen or undermine the main arguments, of, for instance, liberal sovietology in the debate? Does the historical drama of the Russian Idea interrelate with the main arguments of conservatively oriented sovietology? At first glance, the answer is 'no However, first impressions can be deceiving.
First, let us look at the argument that links the scale and intensity of Russian expansionism with Communist ideology It's true that only a Communist dictatorship managed to realize (at least m part) the expansionist program of the degenerate Russian Idea. It's also true that it succeeded — by means of very brutal counter-reform — in restoring serfdom to Russia and even for a time in making slave labour the foundation of Soviet production relations. Furthermore, in 1951 it made a 'final solution' of the Jewish question the most urgent problem in Russia. But what does all this prove? Is it not evidence that degenerate left-wing Russian extremism turned out to be a tool for implementing ihe program of degenerate right-wing extremism; that the deMitated form of Russian Marxist ideology proved to be the reverse side of the debilitated Russian Idea?
If this is correct — that any Russian extremist ideology has a tendency to degenerate and, once degenerate, proves to be an ideology of imperial expansionism — then, one might ask, why draw a connection between expansionism and Communist ideology? Where is the sense in supporting one form of Russian extremism against another (which is the de facto policy of the Reagan administration)? We may recall that the program of the pre-revolutionary Russian Idea required the domination of 'Judaized' Europe, in essence a 'New European
Order'. The full realization of this program proved beyond the means of even a Communist dictatorship at the height of counter-reform. Wc cannot know whether it would also prove to be beyond the capacity of a fascist dictatorship in a similar situation, should, God forbid, Dunlof 5 scena- о come to pass. In any event, no policy could be more absurd than one wh ,;h helped to bring about a new historical catastrophe in Russia by supporting Fascism against Communism — if only because, as the Russian proverb says, horseradish is no sweeter than radishes (six to one and half a dozen to the other).
he ideological approach toward Russia (.extremist anti-Communism) taken by the conservatives in the vVestern debate deprives us of the opportunity to view the present political situation in its historical context, to adopt a perspective that relates the past to the future. It lives only in one dimension — the present. But to neglect the past means not to think about the future. As we shall see, the liberal geopolitical approach toward Russia suffers from the same shortcoming.
In order to show this, I shall examine here two main arguments of each of the two schools which dominate America's Soviet debate. In addition, I shall try to show that only an historical approach teaches us no1 to place our trust in any Russian extremist Utopias, however much goodness and prosperity they may promise Russia and the world. Most important, however, is that only an historical approach can uncover the fundamental patterns in Russian political behaviour — and so help Western leaders not to slumble about in the dark, or, at the very least, save them from such errors as occurred in the Radio Liberty scandal.
An h storical approach opposes in principle the conventional wisdom shared by all sides in America's Soviet debate, which holds that 'the secretive nature of Sov iet society makes t something of a "black box" to us,'1 and because of th s the 'Soviet Union will remain both an enigma and an inescapable fact. 2 Although such a defeatist and self- deprecating position indeed logically follows from both of the conventional approaches, n fact we have no need to blame the Russian political system or 'the secret've nature of Soviet soiJety' for this. We ourselves have restricted our vision of Russia to only the two or three generations since 1917. We ourselves have refused the broader perspective that is opened up by analysis of the political behaviour of at least twenty generations of Russians (we shall discuss this in greater detail later). From the standpoint of an historical approach, we are the ones who have transformed Russia into a 'black box'.
The conservatives' flawed argument
The first, and main, argument of conservative sovietology I would formulate thus: successful resistance to Communist totalitarianism can be achieved only by a policy of actively undermining Communist regimes, and ultimately by overthrowing Russia's Communist regime. In the prc-nuclear age such a policy, if consistently conducted by an American administration, would have led to a new world war. Had the West won such a war, it could then have occupied the Soviet Union, broken apart its empire and forced upon occupicd Russia a more or less liberal constitution, That would be the 'Japanese modei for forcibly transforming military autocracy. To put it another way, in the pre-nuclear age such a policy would have made some sense, if, of course, the West were willing to take the risk and pay the price of a new world war in order to break the centuries-long patterns of the Russian political system's behaviour. But what sense does such a policy make in the nuclear era? Now that a new world war and occupation of Russia are unthinkable, the possibility of breaking these patterns by imposing a new regime does not exist, and, even if Communist power were overthrown internally, Russia would continue to function according to the same old pattern