Ill The aiiving motives of this adaptation differ for each of the two sub-ideologies according to different historical conditions. For the contemporary Establishment Right, the following are essentiaclass="underline"
The intensificat m of political struggle within the establishment as the system degenerates.
Opposition to reform, which they see as undermining their privileges and as a threat to the empire, and a simultaneous unw. llingness to reconcile themselves to the state of political stagnation that is lead lg the country into decline. Under these conditions, counter-reform may seem the least harmful, if not the only, means to enable the empire to halt its decline and begin a new sj ral of historical ascendancy.
Counter-reform demands a raaical ideological shift to restore to the empire its former dynamic character, to gain the active co- opera» on and sympathy of the masses and parts of the intelligentsia, to ustify an intensification of production, and of family and cultural discipline, and to resurrect the militaristic expansionist dynamic.
Orthodox Marxism is on its last legs and is no longer capable of such a radial shift, and in no cond ion to justify the reinstitution of the ideological atmospnere of War Communism. It is also losing its internal onal potency, as foreign Marxists are turning their backs on the Soviet model. It can no longer secure the expansion of Russia's power.
A powerful and sophsnicated deological strategy is demanded by counter-reform. Where :'s the Establishment Right to obtain th s? As strong as it is in bureaucratic politics, it is helpless in the f eld of itellectual endeavour In fact, its only resource is to be found in its oppressed and exiled dissident sister. In this sense, it is truly 'vulnerable to the arguments of the intellectually more sophisticated' dissident nationalists However, it is selectively 'vulnerable', i.e., vulnerable only to those arguments which assist its own political strategy.
For the contemporary Dissident Right, completely different motives are essentiaclass="underline"
(,a) 1 he intensification of ideological struggle within the dissident movement and inability to cope on its own with its main opponent in the dissident camp (Westernism). Its intellectual defeat in this struggle can be converted mto victory only with the help of the state (like the Orthodox church, unable to cope with heresy by the spiritual sword for centuries resorted to calling for help on the state's physical sword, and so became dependent on it.) The contemporary Dissident Right feels increasingly out of place in the ranks of the dissident movement, which rebuts its demands for leadership and thus deprives it of a base of support among the incorrigibly 'westernized dissident intelligentsia. (,b) The lack of real means to influence the masses ideologically (means of mass communication, mass nstitutions and so on, which are controlled by its establishment sister)
A hatred for the 'rotten' West, i.e., for the values and morals of Western culture, which represent the tangible embodiment of decadence and historical degradation. This hatred the Dissident Right fully shares with its establishment sister.
A readiness to sacrifice (for the sake of Russia's salvation') political and intellectual freedom which is programmed mto its political catechism. This helps the Dissident Right to overcome the emotional barrier of organic incompatibi'ity with native autocracy common to all dissidents.
(I-Nationalism), and thence to a militaristic-imperial, Black Hundreds, fascist-style nationalism that blends with the of! ;ial ideology in the process of counter-reform (F-Nat'onalism).
That is approximately how my hypothesis looked in 1975, when it was formulated for the first time in a paper 'Halfway to Konstantin Leont'ev. the Paradox of Solzhenitsyn'. delivered at the 7th National Convention of the American Association for the Advancement of Slavic Studies (AAASS) in Atlanta, Georgia. It was then based mainly on Solzhenitsyn's letter to the Soviet leaders, on his articles in the collection From Under the Rubble, on my personal — and rather sad — experiences of discussions with Russian nationalists, and on the historical model of Slavophilism's degeneration. I understood that to identify Solzhenitsyn with the Russian Right at the moment of his greatest fame as a world tribune and fighter against totalitarianism meant making my hypothesis sound more лке a sacrilegious prophecy than a dispassionate scholarly analysis. Since that time, however, I have collected enough documents to verify my hypothesis, which nas been gradually fleshed out with facts and itself become a fact of life. As the reader will see, the momentum in the Dissident Right has indeed developed according to script, that is, from L-Nationalism to 1-Nationalism This process, however, is still incomplete. The evolution of the Russian Idea continues. Some of the contours of F-Nat.onaJism, which, if one is to believe Dunlop, may be destined one day to become the new official ideology of the Russian empire, are already discernable. Yet it still does not exist as a comolete doctrine like the one developed by the third pre-revolutionary Slavophile generation: 'The path to Constantinople leads through Berlin'; 'Russia as the sole oastion of Christianity in the struggle against the worldwide Freemason—kike conspiracy', and so on. In this sense, my hypothesis remains an hypothesis.
в
Caught in the Crossfire
The fate of the Russian Idea in the last century has long been my specialty. At the end of the 19b0s I defended a dissertation entitled The Slavophiles and Konstantin Leont'ev: the Degeneration of Russian Nationalism, 185b—9Г. I shall not pretend that I was guided only by scholarly interest, though even from a purely academic standpoint the theme was an explosive one: Leont'ev had been taboo in Soviet historiography since the 1930s and the study of Slavophilism had remained at a standstill for decades. The most notable aspect of my subject, however, was not ite academic potential at all; it was in Russian reality :self at the end of the 19b0s, when history seemed to come to life before our eyes.
It was as though 'from under the rubble' of moss-covered official ideology. Iresh new voices suddenly started to force their way through, proclaiming the need for a national rebirth', 'returning to national roots and Russia's salvation'. A new spirit swept through Moscow like a whirlwind. It arose spontaneously from below, like a force of nature, not orchestrated by the authorities, but rather, at times, directly opposed to them. At literary gatherings in people's living rooms, at clubs and universities, nervous old men appeared from nowhere, as if risen out of the ground, calling for a 'return home' to fhe shrines of our national spirit', and sullen youths, solemnly held forth about the land' and the 'soil' — as if they were 1830s Slavophiles come back to life. One of the most popular Moscow magazines, Moloduia gvardia [Young Guard}' joined this chorus with a series of powerful articles. Suddenly the impending extinction of the Russian village (the very thing which had so appalled me when, as a journalist, I had travelled across virtually half of Russia and which led rne to write my most bitter series of articles)1 which was threatening to leave the cradle of the nation (the north-eastern part of Great Russia) horribly desolate, became a fashionable topic of conversation.
Suddenly, the intelligentsia began to spend their vacations in villages close to the graves of their ancestors instead of the popular resorts of the Crimea, Caucasus or Baltic. Young people started to wander around the dying villages collecting icons and very soon there was almost no intellectual's home in Moscow that was not decorated with symbols of Russian Orthodoxy. The writer Vladimir Soloukhin turned up at the House of Writers wearing a signet ring carrying the mage of the late emperor Nicholas II. A fervent demand arose on the black market for books written by 'counter-revolutionaries' and 'White Guardsmen' who had died abroad. Solzhenitsyn later summed up the mood of the time: 'It is a thoughtless delusion to consider the Russians the "ruling nation" in the USSR . . . Russians are the main mass of that state's slaves. The Russian people are emaciated and biologically degenerating, their national consciousness is humiliated and suppressed.'2