All of this reinforced-concrete phraseology sounded impeccable, albeit trivial. Dement ev overlooked just a single blunder — so small that an outsider would not have even noticed t. The long essay contained a short passage with which Dement'ev effectively condemned himself — himself and not Chalmaev, a Marxist and not a heretic — to ideological extinction
'Chalmaev and Lobanov', he wrote, 'point to the danger of alien ideological influences. Will we be able to stand our ground, say, against the temptation of "bourgeois prosperity'" . . . Tn today's ideological struggle the temptation of ' Americanism" . . . must not be underestimated', Chalmaev asserts. Correct. But neither should it be overestimated . . . Soviet society, by its very . . nature, is not predisposed to bourgeois influences.'34
That was it — and the death sentence was pronounced — not only tor Dement'ev but also for Novyi mir, which had heroically withstood the rabid attacks of all the Stalinist hacks, had published Solzhenitsyn and Sii iavsky, and had apparently stood unshaken as the sole bastion of liberalism in a stormy sea of reaction Now it fell It fell (what irony!) not because of Solzhenitsyn or Siniavsky, but because of an orthodox Marxist essay which sought to defend the purity of the Party's ideological vestments.35 Dement'ev himself involuntarily
prophesied this distressing finale when he noted that, 'it is dangerous to find oneself in the hands of the violent, unrestrained enemies of "the educated shopkeepers" and passionate zealots of "the national spirit".'36 Yea verily, as it turned out, it is quite dangerous — even for Marxists in Moscow.
Doesn't this mean that by protesting against the Russian Right Novyi mir struck the regime's most sensitive nerve (considering the balance of forces in it at the time)? This is perhaps most clearly to oe seen from the furious collective letter signed by eleven writers — including representatives of both orthodox Stal;nism and the Russian Right — printed in Ogonek under the title What Is Novyi mir Speaking Out Against?'37 Their argument was simple and devasta ng:
Contrary to the zealous appeals of A. Dement'ev not to exaggerate 'the dangers of alien ideological influences', we continue to maintain that the penetration of bourgeois ideology among us was, has been, and remains a very serious danger . . . [which] may lead to the gradual replacement of the concepts of proletarian internationalism with the cosmopolitan ideas so dear to the hearts of certain critics and writers grouped around the journal Novyi mir.iS
The ominous word 'cosmopolitanism had oeen pronounced.39 To someone who is aware of the internal balance of ideological forces in the Soviet establishment (or one who merely knows who , who), this explains how representatives of the orthodox Stalinist r ght, such as M. Alekseev and V. Zakrutkin, came to unite with apologists of the new Russian Right, such as A. Ivanov or S. Vikulov. It also explains how Novyi mir had been able to stand up to Oktyabr' for so long. It was because the two factions of the right were div ded Up till then, the Russophiles had only stood by in amusement as the Stalinists and the liberals quarrelled and paid no attention to their deological expansion. Only when they joined forces did they bej n to sense their real power. This was the first action in the post-Stalinist era by a unified Establishment Right - a kind of historical experiment which demonstrated its extraordinary political potential.40
It was now a matter of carefully and tactfully bridging the gap that separated the Russophiles from the Stalinists — of transforming the alliance of right-wing tactions from an ad hoc tactical union into a stable political force able to exert a continuing influence on the
strategic goals of tne regime.
After the enraged invective of the 'old guard' (Okiyabr') agamst Young Guardism, such an operation had seemed, in principle, impossible. Oktyabr' would never commit itself to such heresy as to say that the foundation and life-blood of the Soviet state was not the working class but the peasantry, or that the 'national sphit rather than 'proletarian internationalism', should serve as its guicing star — never in a million years. But Ogonek was more compliant It suddenly discovered that Lobanov's 'diplomaed masses' were essentially the same as Sofronov's 'rootless cosmopolitans' by another name. In other words, it seemed for a time that both factions of the Establishment Right at last understood that they had one common enemy
But very shortly they came under attack So long as it was a matter of common struggle against the liberal intelligentsia, ep>tomized by Novyi mi*J they were allowed to have their head. But the term diplomaed masses' did not include |ust liberals, A significant part of the powerful ruling faction of the Centre was also 'diplomaed' — and furthermore, considerably more nterestcd than liberals in contacts with the West (to say nothing of the fact that its 'cosmopoLianism' — its opportunities, so to speak, for the importation of "world evil' — were incomparably broader).
Thus what began as a relatively innocent coalition against Novyi tnir had to grow if it was to stabilize nto a political opposition to the cosmopolitanism' of the Brezhnev regime itself (which was infected to the marrow by bourgeois .deas of 'satiety'). The struggle against liberal cosmopolitanism' was related logically to the struggle against governmental, Brezhnevist, 'cosmopolitanism'.
I do not claim that the leaders of Russophilism necessarily had any clear conception of this. I only wish to note that when Molodaia gvardia published its third programmatic declaration in 1970 (Sergei Semanov's essay 'On Relative and Eternal Values') it did precisely what we have lust been talking about: it took a bold step toward meet:ng the old guard half-way. However, it made the tactical mistake of executing this very clumsily.
Young Guard s Mistake
Certainly Molodaia gvardia was no stranger to, so to speak, sentimental Stalinist motifs. Dement'ev rioted, for example, the extraordinary nature of Feliks Chuev's poem about Stalin.41 But whereas Chuev's poem was a sinister but still minor episode in the evolution of Young Guardism toward Stalinism, Semanov's article was intended to lay the ideological groundwork for this evolution. It contained no fewer odes to the national spirit, songs of praise for the Russian soil, or denunciations of the educated shopkeeper mentality than Chalmaev's article. In it the October Revolution was described as a Russian national (in the sense of ethr c) achievement.42 Semanov declared that, 'in our society, sen ces to the Motherland are valued more highly than anything else',43 and that the chief sin of Trotskyism was 'its profound revuls m for our people, their . . . traditions . . . the г history'.44 But the main point of the article was its unprecedented assertion that, 'the turn lg point in the struggle against wreckers and nihilists took place in the middle of the 1930s', and that, 'it was precisely after the adopt;on of the new Constitution that ... all honest working people of our country were once and for all welded into a un ;d and monolithic whole.'45
After Khrushchev's revelations at the XXth Party Congress, the time about which Semanov is speal ng ('the epoch of 1937') was pronounced anathema and condemned to oblivion. Even according to official h tonography, this was the era of the Party's devastation. Here Semanov declared it the main part of the Revolution, wf^h put an end to the 'wreckers and nihilists' and marked the beg: ming of 'the monolithic unity of our people'.