10
Young Guardism': The Beginning of the Establishment Rrght
John Dunlop is perhaps correct when he says that 'the debate among contemporary NTeo-Slavophiles . . . could be deciding the future shape of Russia's society and government'. He is probably also right when he says, 'VSKhSON has encountered Veche. Their meet ng may yet bear unexpected fruit.'1 I only wish to add that one should not om;t the fact that the debate surrounding contemporary Slavophilism was by no means confined to the underground samizdat, but extended to the official press — to magazines, journals and newspapers with circulations of many millions. These public debates were at times no less stormy than those in the samizdat, and their influence on thinking young people may have been just as important as that of the VSKhSON or Veche. In other words, before the VSKhSON 'encountered' Veche, it encountered the phenomenon of Young Guardism. This encounter may also yet bear 'unexpected fruit'. In any case, the historian of the Russian New Right cannot afford to ignore it.
The first — and most significant — essay in Molodaia gvardia [Young Guard], marking the start of the Establishment Right in post- Stalinist Russia, occurred at the time of the trial of the members of VSKhSON. This was Mikhail Lobanov's 'Educated Shopkeepers',[2] published in April J968. It was followed in September of that year by Viktor Chalmaev's essay 'Inevitability'.
Educated Shopkeepers
To say that the appearance of Lobanov's essay in the official press — indeed in such an influential and popular journal as Molodaiu gvardia — was surprising is an understatement. It came as a great shock, 'he level of malice, venom and wrath wh ch the Soviet press usually reserves for discussions of 'imperialism' or similar 'external' themes was now directed, so to speak, inwardly. Lobanov had unexpectedly uncovered a rotten core at the very heart of the first socialist state in the world — and at the very height of its triumphant transition to Communism. He had discovered an ulcer certainly no less frightful than imperialism — in tact, much worse. It consisted in ihe "educated" person's spiritual degeneration, in the decay of everything human in him 2 What is involved here .s not _,ust an Isolated psychological phenomenon, but a social one on a mass scale — the masses (all with advanced degrees) [being] infected with a shopkeeper mentality'.3 These masses, Lobanov claimed were being churned out by the 'flood of so-called education , which 'like a bark borer . . is gnawing away at the healthy trunk of the nation.'4 They are 'shnlly active in negating and are thus 'threaten'ng to disintegrate'5 the very foundations of national culture.
In short, unforeseen by the classical Marxist theoreticians and unnoticed by the ideologists of the regime, there had already developed in socialist Russia an established stratum of educated shopkeepers' which now represented the nation's number one enemy. Such was Lobanov's fundamental sociological finding
He attacked this enemy of the nation with all the passion an official journalist could bt mg to bear. True culture, he wrote, does not come from education, but from national* sources', — from 'the grass-roots of the people'. It is not the educated shopkeepers but the 'suppressed uneducated folk who gave birth to . . . the imperishable values of culture 6 As for the shopkeepers, 'They have a mini-language, mini- thoughts. mini-feelings — everything mini. And', he solemnly intones, '[the] Motherland is nun to ihem [too].'7
''[Translator's note' the Russian adjective natsional'nyi is used to express many more ideas than its F.nglish cognate 'national It can be used to refer to the people of a nation, nationalism, nationality, or even ethnic identity all at the same time. For example, the issue of the Soviet Union being made up of people of many different nationalities is expressed in Russian as natsional'nyi vopros and usually translated as 'the national question' or 'the nationalities question though ethnicity is clearly an important part of it as well.]
In the best traditions of journalistic toadyism, Lobanov goes on to illustrate his pc nt by denouncing people (both living and dead;, the stage director Meyerhold, shot by Stalin, and the contemporary stage director Efros. For some reason all of Lobanov's illustrations — all his corrupters of the national spirit' — bear unmistakably Jewish surnames. It s these Jewish elements that 'latch on to the history of a great people',8 which play the role of kind of enzyme among 'the diplomaed masses nfected with a shopkeeper mentality'.
As we try to analyse Lobanov's 'findings', we must not fail to take account of the fact they were made at :he height of the 'Prague Spring', which was seen 'upstairs' as the result of the seizure of key positions in the Czechoslovak in mass media by Jewish intellectuals. Nor must we forget that the 'signature campaign' (in the course of wHch hundreds of Moscow intellectuals, in large part Jews, signed their names to protest against re-Stalinization and the trials of Siniavsky and Ginzburg) had yet to die down in the USSR. From this standpoint, Lobanov's unexpected so . olog :al revelations can to some degree be explained. The regime suddenly saw itself faced with an acute threat from the educated strata of the population. A journalist eager to score points with his higher-ups therefore denounced this threat in an effort to w a the support of youth for his bosses.
But what ;s so sti king about Lobanov's defence of the regime is its odd appearance. He does not appeal to Marx or to 'proletarian internationalism'; on the contrary, he aDpeals only to 'the national spirit' and to the 'Russian soJl'. H;s article does not have the clicbe- r: [den look of a 'refutalion' by a Marxist hack, but rather resembles the anguished cry of a Russian terrified of what > nappening to his country, to his nation. Moreover, it ndirectly accuses the regime of not only allow. ng the forma; on of such a sin ^ter social phenomenon as a stratum of 'educated shopkeepers', but of bringing matters to such a dangerous pitch that, as Lobanov exclaims despairingly, 'the mini is triumphing!'9 In the Aesopian language which Lobanov uses, this means the bosses have gone blind: they do not see that the 'min;' exists not just as a thing in itself but also as a kind of 'lobby' for the bourgeois spirit' which has conquered Europe and is now laying siege to Russia. Interestingly, as Lobanov sought to explain why the bourgeois 'mini' was so powerful and attractive to Soviet youth, he openly asserted, 'there is no fiercer enemy of the people than the temptation of bourgeois prosperity.'10 Follow ng this up, he exclaims (quoting Herzen), 'A bourgeois Russia? May Russia be spared this curse!'11 An 'Americanism of the spirit' was what was conquering Russia, not just with the help of the seductive 'miri з' w.fh their refined manners and Jewish surnames, but also aided by the temptation of bourgeois prosperity'. (In place of this read 'the material well-being of the working people', which is the fundamental bulwark
of post-Stalinist Soviet .deology.)
In other words, the Soviet leaders themselves, by their orientation toward material prosperity and their promises that Communism will bring physical as well as spiritual 'satiety', are helpmg the bourgeois spirit to conquer Russia. 1 hey engage in tlirtation with America. I hey think their ICBMs will be able to defend them from the morial threat radiating from that country. They will not, Lobanov admonishes, he real threat is not American missiles, but rather the bourgeoisness of the 'American spirit'. This 'bourgeoisness' is not 'man s exploitation of his fellow man', but the lure of satiety. That is Lobanov's second 'finding'. Spiritual satiety — is the psychological [my emphasis] foundation of the bourgeois.'12 But the social foundation of the bourgeois nature, of course, is material satiety — 'existence within the limits of the pleasures of the stomach 13 Lobanov launches a powerful invective against these 'gastric pleasures', against 'the pot belly,' drawing on quotations from Hugo and Gogol' and devoting almost an entire page to them.14