Recognition in principle of the Soviet system as potentially 'Russian' in spi it.
Latent recognition of the Brezlmevist reg me as oriented toward the 'diplomaed masses' and the bourgeois values of 'satiety and 'education', as 'cosmopolitan' and 'non Russian' in spirit, therefore not Soviet and the embodiment of 'flabbiness and torpor'.
An apocalyptic vision of the 'inevitability' of a final showdown between the 'Russian spirit' and 'Americar sm', which will complete the world's pre-history.
The necessity of completely changing the orientation of the regime, which is now 'flippant in its attitude toward the Motherland
An agreement to return to at least some of the values of the 'lost paradise' of Stalinism as the embodiment of the Russo-Byzanti ne tradition.
A distinction made for the first time, and in Aesopian language, between the Soviet system (positively 'Russian') and a particular Soviet regime ('non-Russian' in its basic orientation). Hence the
ilf in strategies recommended by the Dissident and Establish ment Right from the outset: whereas VSKhSON proposed replacing the Soviet system with a 'corporate state' via 'revolution from below', Young Guardism essentially proposed replacement of the pseudo-Soviet, in its view, Brezhnevist regime by a genuinely Soviet 'Russian' one via 'revolution from above'. (That is, in my terms, via a counter-reform).
Notes
John Dunlop, The New Russian Revolutionaries, p 221
Molodaia gvardia, 1968, No. 4, p. 297.
Ibid., p. 299.
Ibid., p. 303.
Ibid , p. 29b.
Ibid., p. 299.
Ibid., p. 296.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid , p 304. Emphasis added.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Щ Ibid.
II my analysis of the structure of the Soviet Establishment in Detente after Brezhenev (Berkeley, 1977) is even partly correet, and if withm the Establishment there are powerful groups (aristocratizing elites) who consider their 'pleasures of the stomach' (primarily Western in origin) as the highest value in life, then Lobanov's philippies probably reflect the reaetion of their puritanical Stalinist opponents.
Molodaia gxardia, 1968, No. 4, p. 304.
Ibid , p. 30b
Strange as it may seem, the politically stagnant regime of the last two decades may have actually taken some of the Young Guard s advice. Whereas at the start of the 19b0s, under a regime of reform, 57% of the graduates of Soviet secondary schools were allowed to matriculate at institutions of higher education, a decade later the figure had fallen to only 22%. (See Murray Yanowitch. 'Schooling and Inequalities', in Leonard Sehapiro and Joseph Godson cd. The Soviet Worker: Illusions and Realities, Macmillan, 1981 )
A regime of stagnation eould not have taken this adviee without denying its own fundamental tenets. Only a dictatorial regime, in a counter- reform situation, would be able to implement Lobanov's aseetie recommendation — yet another piece of e\ idencc to support the view that the Russian New Right is oriented toward counter reform
Molodaia gvardia, 19b8, No. 9, p. 271.
Ibid., p. 270.
Ibid., p. 2bb.
Ibid., p. 2b8.
Ibid
Ibid , p. 2bb.
Ibid., p. 2b5.
2b Ibid., pp. 2b7-8.
Ibid., p. 25b.
Ibid., p 2b8 And on p. 2b4. 'Onee in a hundred years — the ice of Lake Chud. the lush grasses of the fields of Kulikovo, Poltava, Borodino.'
Ibid., p. 2bb.
The 'Byzantinisrn of Russia is an idea of Konstantin Leont'ev. According to this concept, Russia is not merely a state: Russia is a separate world, a special civilization, which has inherited the world task of the Eastern Roman Empire — that of resisting the bourgeois West; or, as Lobanov would put it in the terms of the contemporary Russian Right, the task of crushing 'Americanism of the spirit'.
Molodafa gvardia, 1968, No. 9, p. 2b2. Emphasis added.
Ibid., p. 263.
Novyi mir, 1969, No. 4, p. 226.
Ibid., pp. 225-6.
I have heard more than once from members of the Central Committee staff that Dement'ev's essay was, if not the cause, then the pretext for the removal (in 1970) of Tvardovskii, the liberal chief of Novyi mir.
Novyi mir, 1969, No. 4, pp. 221 — 2.
These 'signatories', who not only were not punished for their joint letter
unlike in dozens of analogous cases which occurred at the same time
but even managed to topple Tvardovskii from his position were: Mikhail Alekseev, Sergei Vikulov, Sergei Voronin, Vitalii Zakrutkin, Anatolii Ivanov, Sergei Malashkin, Aleksandr Prokof'ev, Petr Proskurin, Sergei Smirnov, Vladimir Chivilikhin, and Nikolai Shundik.
Qgonek, July 19b9, No. 30. Emphasis added.
Of course it is no coincidence that the letter was published in Ogonek, which was headed by the chief witch-hunter of the 'cosmopolitan' campaign of the late 1940s, A. Sofronov. Sofronov has an excellent feel for such things, and the fact that he considered it possible to intervene openly in the conflict suggests thai a showdown was in the air in 1969.
The Western observer should take careful note of this ep sode, which clearly indicates how effective a coalition of the right-wing factions within the Soviet establishment can be under certain cond lions, and not only in the struggle against 'liberalism'. It is clear that establishment 'liberalism' can exist only as long as the ruling centrist fac on iinds it convenient and politically safe to support it. We can therefore tentatively suggest that the rout of the old editorial board of Novyi mir to some extent represented a retreat by the centrists. It may be that Sofronov's feelings did not deceive him: it may be that he was not mistaken in thinking that his hour had come once again. Perhaps the rout of Novyi mir could — under the right circumstances — have served as a signal for a new 'anti-cosmopolitan' campaign.
This poem (a very sincere one, incidentally) speaks of a day when a Museum of World War II will be erected in Moscow: 'Let all who come in feel their dependence/On the Motherland, on everything Russian/There in the middle — is our Generalissimo/And his Marshals great.' Dement'ev commented venomously: 'Here we already have a notable attempt to combine an appeal to the "sources" with dreams of the future' (Novy mir, 1969, No. 4, p. 230) It is true that a motherland unconditionally tied to things 'Russian' (and not things 'Soviet') is Young Guardism, but 'our Generalissimo' in centre stage is already something out of another 'old guard' opera.
Molodaia gvardia, 1970, No. 8, p. 317.
Ibid., p. 316.
Ibid., p. 318.
Ibid , p. 319.
4b Ibid.
Komrnunist, 1970, No. 17, p. 97
Ibid., p. 98.
Ibid p. 99. Emphasis added.
The Melent'ev affair, which became partially known through Melent'ev himself, was for a long time a favourite subject of discussion in the corridors of the Central Committee and in circles close to it However to get an authoritative and unambiguous answer from the inhabitants of these corridors to the question, precisely who gave Melent'ev the authority for such an unprecedented move, proved impossible.
Shauro's tactics were constructed on the principle of hiding the political nature of Russophilism and depicting it as an exclusively cultural phenomenon. After all, what's so bad ahout young people being interested in their nation's past, or enthusiastically paying tribute to their roots in the Russian village? Shauro's position can best be described in the words of an authoritative scholar: 'In some Russian circles . . . there has been within the last decade something akin to a cult of the Russian past — the village tradition. Russian folk customs and art. and so forth . mainly cultural in character and 'on the emotional lex el (Commentary, August 1977, p. 42). If Yakovlev read this passage he would probably be convinced that it had been written by someone prompted by Shauro. One can imagine how surprised he would have been had he found oui that this was written not by one of Shauro's minions from the CPSU Central Committee Cultural Department, but by Walter Laqueur (whom I cited earlier for his penetrating explanations of the intricacies of 1920s emigre Russian nationalism). Unfortunately, as happened later with Pipes and Hough and virtually every other American expert, all his subtle political insight left Mr Laqueur as soon as he encountered the phenomenon of contemporary' Russian nationalism