My feelings tell me that someday a Slavic Orthodox tsar shall take the socialist movement in hand and, with the blessing of the Church, set up a socialist form of life in place of the bourgeois-liberal one. And this Socialism will be a new and severe threefold form of slavery, to the communes, to the Church and to the Tsar.5
Vasilii Rozanov insightfully remarked on this point, 'One who knows and senses Leont'ev, has to agree that, given free reign and the power (with which Nietzsche wouldn't have done anything), he would plunge Europe by fire and bloodshed into a monstrous political turn of events.'6 So much for the fellow-travellers' assurances that the Russian Idea could not give birth to a Stalin.
The laissez-faire argument
At first glance, the liberal arguments look much more rational and, if I may say, secular. The liberals do not keep talking about crusades and they don't bring the religious and ideological dimensions of superpower confrontation to centre stage. Their geopolitical metaphors cast Russia as a new superpower which, like imperial Germany on the eve of World War I, is challenging the old world order (or, like a new Austria —Hungary, is trying to save itself from disintegration by means of imperial expansion). This form of the Western debate lacks the flavour of the medieval dispute of the conservatives' argument. Indeed, liberal sovietology recognizes the problem of political change as 'absolutely fundamental for our conception of the Soviet Union. 7 Moreover, it believes that 'it is precisely here where our stereotypes are the most str kingly outmoded.'8
All this notwithstanding, if one listens closely to their discussion, it is difficult not to feel lhat such arguments belong more appropriately in the mouths of Enlightenment philosophers or the fathers of the American constitution. Certainly, after the heated medieval atmosphere of conservative disputes, it's pleasant to find oneself in the cool climate of detached rational doctrines of, say, the Encyclopedists of the eighteenth century, with their unshakeable faith n the panaceas of enlightenment and progress. However, i: is hard to imagine such doctrines leading to a concrete set of policies appropriate to ihe nuclear age.
Their basic argument can probably be summed up thus: if we do not embark upon an active crusade, as advocated by the conservatives, but instead leave the Soviet Union in peace, limiting ourselves to the containmenl of its expansionist tendencies and of the arms race, then Russia will somehow, all by herself, not only overcome her historical decline, but also gradually liberalize her regime, thereby resolving for us the fatally dangerous problem of confrontation with a totalitarian superpower In contrast to the feverish anti-Commun.st activism of conservatives, this postulate requires from the West simply caution, exactness and tact (plus, of course, the wish to stop the insane nuclear arms race by means of control agreements). Progress and enlightenment will take care of the rest, either with the help of generational change within the Soviet leadership or because the ;mperative of modernizing the economy will sooner or later force the leadership to move toward political liberalization.
Timothy Colton epitomizes this abslract beliel in progress with the following statement: 'The ultimate Western resource for influencing the Soviet society is . . . the slow-acting magnet of Western culture.'9 He understands that 'altered attitudes and values take generations.'10 Yet we simplv can do nothing more to move Russia 'in the direction congenial to Western 'iiterests.'11
Sue! is the thiust of all liberal arguments. Let us examine them one by one. beginning with 'the slow-acting magnet of Western culture.'
Didn't this magnet exist throughout all the five centuries of Russia's imperial history? It did. Why ihen did it fail, over the course of twenty generations, to move Russia in the direction congenial to Western interests? What grounds do we have to expect it to accomplish in future generations what it faiied to do in all the preceding ones? Even more to the point, does humanity have at its disposal these future generations in the nuclear age? Let us turn to Colton's own prediction that n the event a new reform in the 1980s fails, Russia would face an unprecedented с sis as early as the next decade: 'If conservatives or reacdonai es gain the upper hand in the 1980s, or if bungled reforms come to naught ... the 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'?12
It appears that the 'slow-working magnet' would be too slow to prevent such lamentable developments. So what does libera) sovietology recommend in tl s case, besides a remedy which surely wouldn't be ready in time, f ever? What would happen to Russia, and to the world, if its leadership finds itself 'under attack as never before'? There are no answers to these crucial questions in Colton's book. It is here where the qu'ck generational change comes to the rescue of the 'slow-working magnet.'
The engine of charge is the emergence of new generations, with new expectations and experiences, . . . The younger elites are well educated and competent. Not liberals in a Western sense, their thinking is nevertheless far more sophisticated than that of high-level party members, which has been characterized by parochial fundamentalism. They are free of the formative influences of the Revolution and the Stalinist terror and are relatively knowledgeable about the outside world and prepared to learn from it.13
This implies that, as a result of the gradual trans ,:ion of the Soviet elite, and consequently the government, from socialist fundamentalism to, let us say, socia st enligntenment, polit'cal change in Rus; la v 11 progress in a positive, nberal direct m.
The problem with th s argument is that, unfortunately, it does not adequately describe political change even in the Soviet period of Russian history (insignificant though this may be on the chronological scale). The present-day Soviet government is ndeed younger and more educated than its immediate predecessor. It is not, however, younger or more educated than the first Soviet government, its predecessor's predecessor. Lenin did not live to reach the same age at which the youngster' Gorbachev became general secretary, and Lenin was significantly older than his colleagues. In reality, the first Soviet government probably was the youngest and most educated one in Russian history. This circumstance in no way prevented it, however, from presiding over a regime of counter-reform.
Subsequent Soviet governments were increasingly older and less educated, until, at last, they lapsed into the aforementioned parochial fundamentalism, which nevertheless did not prevent some of them from presiding over a relatively liberal regime in the 1920s and others over a regime of terro, istic counter-reform in the 1930s and "40s Once again, irrespective of age and level of education, the post-Stalinist governments presided over a regime first of reform in the 1950s and early '60s and then of political stagnation in the 1970s. Nikita Khrushchev was significantly older than Leonid Brezhnev, something which did not hinder him from being a bold and colourful reformer, whereas Brezhnev and his generation, the very same one to whom Lenin had promised the Communist dream fullilled, landed the country m a quagmire of stagnation.
In other words, facts show that the rhythm of political change n Russia has never corresponded to generational changes or changes ,n the age and level of education of the political elite — even ,n the Soviet period. All the more so, the theory of generational change proves a completely unreliable guide to the labyrinths of the Russian political system once we reject the postulate of Soviet Russia as a 'black box' and move beyond the boundaries of the Soviet sub-system of Russian autocracy. Here it turns out that our study of the degeneration of the Russian Idea (as well as Russian Marxism) has a very direct relation to America's Soviet debate History, in essence, strips us of the optimistic hope that everything in Russia will take care of itself with the mechanical change of generations, that biology will serve as a substitute for sound policy, which is what the liberal thesis ultimately comes down to One generation of Russian political ideologists after another has passed before us and each was less and less liberal and more and more bellicose and expansionist than the one before. If KonstantMi Aksakov were to be called a fundamentalist of the Russian Idea, who would argue that Danilevskii was more liberal than him, not to speak of Leont'ev or Sharapov?