Victory over tins scholarly anachronism was not simple. I shan t dwell on it here, other than to say that when the debate was over only fragments remained of the fossilized dogma that had magiried 'tself alone capable of interpreting Russian nationalism. Of course, my efforts by themselves were not enough to achieve this. A whole group of experts who had long ago begun to doubt the dogma's scholarly merits picked it apart piece by piece and proved its falsity. What I did not understand then, however, was that by destroying the old dogma I was at the same time calling down on myself the fire of the new. So from that point on I was trapped in a crossfire. The representatives of the new dogma attacked me for just the opposite sin: because, in the process of fighting to destroy the old dogma, I had challenged their newly obta'iied harmony; because I had resurrected the spirit of the classical crtique of Russian nationalism; and because, finally, I had returned to the 'duality formula', from which the degeneration of the Russian Idea logically followed.
I enjoyed the fate of all those whose views do not fit neatly into any of the conflicting canons of the contemporary world The Marxists accused me of RussophJism and the Russophiles of Marxism. For the left' I was 'right' and for the 'right I was 'left'. This situation of being caught in the crossfire continued right up to the time I left Moscow — never to return.
The heat of the kitchen
Arrived in the United States, however, I did not have to wait long before I was again being called names — up until the publication of The Russian New Right in 1978, that is. This was a completely different kmc! of crossfire. On the one side were the representatives of the emigre faction of the Russian Idea and on the other were their academic fellow-travellers. Ironically, the former, unlike my Soviet critics, accused me of not being a good anti-Soviet citizen, while the latter accused me of, so to speak, academic insufficiency. The polemics of the 1970s, much more crude than the discussions of the 1960s, were none the less, in terms of content, unproductive. Not one of the principal questions of the Russian Idea's degeneration was even touched on. Let me с te a few examples.
Here's how Solzhenitsyn replied to my hypothesis on the structure of Russian national, jm's evolution:
Think about it: those who collaoorated with the National Socialists were condemned, but those who for decades collaborated with the Communists . . . those the West receives as' best friends and experts . . . Here's Yanov. He was a Communist journalist for 17 years, unknown to anyone — published in [the magazine] Molodoi kommunist and still lessei ones. And here, all of a sudden he is a university professor. He has already published two books analysing the USSR with a most hostile attitude toward everything Russian . . . The message of his books is: prop up Brezhnev with all your strength, support the Communist reg ne!7
As the reader sees, Solzhenitsyn responded to my arguments in exactly the same way as the Soviet press responded to his own, only in his case it was called — and justifiedly so — a smear campaign, while in mine it was used as a substitute for ideological c.scussion. Apparently, those representatives of the Russian fdea had nothmg of substance to contribute to the discussion. Thus it was left to the academic fellow-travellers to attack me. Here is an example of how this was done:
[Sidney] Monas seems to adhere to the view, first articulated by the historian P. N. Miliukov and lately resurrected (without attribution) by Alexander Yanov, that Slavophilism must degenerate, evolving in the direction of the Black Hundreds . . . The Miliukov—Yanov model is obviously inadequate.8
Considering that Miliukov, as we know from our study of the critics of the Russian Idea, was one of the last to join the general chorus of the liberal press at the time, and that the very term 'Black Hundreds' only appeared twelve years after Miliukov's lecture (so that he could not possibly have been the author of any model), it is obvious that this particular academic fellow-traveller has, unfortunately, intervened in the argument without having famailiarized himself with the facts beforehand. Even so, he has at least remained within an academic
framework Others did not.
'Yanov is an obliging propagandist of bankrupt socialist circles,' declared another fellow-traveller, 'and, apparently, a lobbyist for the so-called "Dnepropetrovsk group" '9 A third proposed ihat Yanov 'is trying to revise the usual Western view of Soviet disstdence [because] he is a Jew' 10 'It looks as though', a fourth wrote, 'Yanov is lobbying for some group within the Soviet leadership (apparently the so-called "Dnepropetrovsk group"1) which fears that t will be swept aside after Brezhnev leaves . . . Enough Enough of Yanov.'11
Life, however, continued to take its course. It subjected my hypothesis to the critical test which гщг opponents had refused it. The degeneration of the Russian Idea becomes more obvious with each passing year. Only now I am wiser than I was f'fteen years ago. Now I know in advance that, with the publication of this book discussing the degeneration of the Russian Idea within the context of the Western debate on Russia, I shall, once again for the third time, be caught ,n a crossfire. Once again my views will not fit neatly into any of the conflict1'ng canons. Conservatives will criticize my book because they still value the Russian Idea as an ally against Communism (and as a substitute for the answers they lack to the fundamental questions in che r own political strategy). Liberals will hold it against me because their abstract faith in progress and enlightenment cannot accommodate my hypothesis of the inherently catastrophic nature of the Russian imperial dynamic. Well, as they say in Russia, 'If you're afraid of wolves, don't go into the forest' (or as they say in the West, 'If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen').
Notes
See. for example. 'Trevogi Smolenshchiny' (Literaiumaia gazeta, 23 and 26 June 1966); 'Kostromskoi eksperiinent' (Ibid., 17 December 1%7); 'Kolkhoznoc sobranie' (Kotnsornolskaia pravda, 5 June 19b6). All these articles have been reprinted in English (International Journal of Sociology, Summer—Fall 1976).
'Kommuni7.m u vsekh na vidy, a ne ponvat', ['Communism is there for all to see, but isn't understood' ], Novoe russkoe slovo, 17 February 1980.
Politicheskii dnevnik, No. 18, March I9b6.
Khron ':a tekushchikh sobvtii [Chronicle of Current Events], No. 7, p. 17.
Ibid
Trudy biblioteki imem V. I. Lenina, Sbomik IV [Works of the Lenin Library, Collection IV], Moscow: 1939. p. 19°).
Posev. 1979, No. 4, p. 25.
Slavic Review, Fall 1981, p. 458.
Novyi zhurnal, No. 139, p. 265.
New Oxford Review, Dec. 1979.
Novyi zhurnal, No. 137, p. 173.
In Anticipation of the Year 2000
9
VSKhSON - Beginning of the Dissident R ght
The Liberalism of the VSKhSON
The VSKhSON was the first and, to date, only1 relatively large underground organization in the post-Stalir st period to set itself the goal of overthrowing by force the e> sting state structure in the USSR.2 As one would expect of conspiratorial organizations i 1 general, the VSKhSON had its own set oi by-laws, its own programme and its own methods of agitation and recruitment. It is not, however, the details of its day-to-day activity that interests us here (in fact, there is already a book in English devoted to the history of the VSKhSON).3
As to the organization's programme, it was based, as one m;ght have expected, on irreconcilable hostility toward both traditional devils' of the Russian Idea: the 'soul-destroying despot'sm' of the native government and Western 'parliamentarism.' Yet, although the ideological thrust was the old one, the tactics differed. The VSKhSON proceeded from the assumption that 'the Communist world is disintegrating. The peoples have found from 1 tter experience that it [Communism] brings poverty and oppression, falsehood and moral decay.'4 But the VSKhSON programme was not only a propaganda document. It also called for 'a revolution of national liberation, directed toward overthrowing the dictatorship of the Communist o'.garchy.'5