Emphasis added. Twenty years before this sentence would have sounded like a direct accusation of counter-revolution. In Brezhnev's Russia such things had gone out of fashion But how else can a Soviet ear, trained to associate 'the past' with either tsarism or Stalinism interpret it, even now?
One must not forget the precariousness of Yakovlev's own position. As the official party ideologist, he bore personal responsibility for everything that happened on the ideological front Therefore, by laying his colours on thick, he ipso facto exposed himself to attack (which was probably successfully exploited by his opponents), hut the fact that he went this tar — even risking his position — indicates how seriously lie regarded the matter.
Vol'noe slovo, No. 9—10 p. 44.
Ibid.
Yakovlev was returned from exile by Andropov during his short reign, In July 1985, almost a decade and a half after his defeat, he finally managed to achieve what he could not under Brezhnev. At the XXVIInd Party congress, ln February—March 1986, he was made a Secretary of the
Central Committee in charge of Propaganda. Shauro was, needless to say, fired — another inc cation that the centre of gravity of the ruling coalition is moved to the left by what Gorbachev calls his 'revolution' and which is in effect a repetition of Khrushchev's desperate attempt to revitalize the nation and undermine the Stalinist foundations of Soviet economy and culture.
11
Veche: Loyal Opposition to the Right
The existence of Veche was undoubtedly a landmark in the history of the Dissident Right of post-Stalinist Russia. 'Fat' journals of public affairs, politics and belles lettres are an old Russian tradition, but being a fat typewritten journal of an oppositionist persuasion — with the editor's name and address on the cover and a more or less regular distribution in the USSR for almost four years — made Veche something truly phenomenal.1
From the verv beginning its editorial board enunciated the principle of free and open discussion. Everything that had been accumulating over the course of decades in the minds and souls of those of a 'patriotic Russian persuasion poured out in its pages In this sense — as an barometer of the mood of the 'patriotic masses' — Veche's contribution was priceless. On the other hand, it was a sophisticated journal, published at a highly professional level and so demanding of the Russian intellect that the historical excursions of the VSKhSON and the Young Guards seem amateurish by comparison. Danilevskii and Khomiakov, Leont'ev and Skobelev, as well as all the other luminaries of the nineteenth-century Russian Right were subjected by Veche to exactitig analysis and interpretation in terms of current perspectives. The ecological, economic, architectural, city planning, demographic and literary issues that faced the country were all examined in depth.
Thus, Vcche as an historical source that offers roughly 2,000 pages of very serous material touching on virtually all aspects of Soviet life, deserves a special study in Us own right. It cannot be exhaustively dealt with in the space of this chapter. What interests me here is Veche's importance as an indicator of the political evolution of the Russian Dissident Right and as a remarkable, if unsuccessful, attempt to avert the movement's slide from L-Nationalism to F-Nationalism.
1 have no doubts that the editorial board of Veche and, in particular, its editor-in-chief, Vladimir Nikolaevich Osipov, were liberals (that is, representatives of L-Nationalism) so far as this is possible for imperial nationalists.2 They fought honestly and bravely for their liberal values agi nst all the manifestations of the Black Hundreds' mentality — its anti-semil.sm, and chauvinism — which weighed heavily on them. Nevertheless they were defeated — and this is what seems to be the most significant point about Veche s four-year history. From its very inception it was forced to fight on two fronts — not only against the KGB (as is clear from the many declarations of Osipov and noted by all those who have written about the journal), but also against its own constituency, the 'patriotic masses' (a point which, to my knowledge, has so far not been noted by anyone). It is hard to say which of these fronts was the more aiff:cult — the police persecution from 'above' or maintaining their liberal positions under very powerful pressures from 'below' (at least, the spl t in the editor al board preceded Osipov's arrest). In this sense, Veche s an excellent indicator of the very severe crisis through which 'iberal nationalism passed in the first half of the 1970s. For, desp e the liberalism of its editor il board, many of the prerequisites for a transition to F-Nat'onalism became rather clearly formulated on its pages. Moreover, the gloomy nostalgia that gr ^ped its audience, 'the patriotic Russian masses , and the yearning for the restoration of GiCtatorship, for crude restraint of 'non-Russians' and for a new Stalinist campa >n against 'cosmopolitar sin', found expression there as well.
In th's sense Veche s experience ;s ur.que. Neither before nor since has there been a publication wf 'ch offers us such an opportunity to look at what is really go xig on 'down there' among the 'patriotic Russian masses', what they felt and how they reacted to a regime of stagnation, and how they themselves pictured the Russian Idea. It was a window on somethmg otherwise totally obscure — a pouit which no Western commentator has noted. L'kewise, they have Ibited to note the principle paradox of Veche: it had two faces, its liberal one having been gradually but inexorably squeezed out by a savage chauvinist twin.
Veche's Conception of Isolationism
In the 1960s, in the period of the VSKhSON and Young Guardism, the Chinese threat was not yet perceived as something of decisive importance for Russia's national survival. Therefore, the critical edge of rightist doctrine was directed against either 'Communism and capitalism' or 'Americanization of the spirit' Nationalist thought was dominated by the problem of 'Russia and the West . The world drama it sought to describe was that of the salvation of mankind from the poisonous products of the Western spirit, which were seen to be leading humanity into an abyss, Russia, with her Orthodoxy on the one hand and her 'moral uniqueness' on the other, was assigned the active, saving, messianic role in this drama.
There simply was no room for a Chinese threat in this carefully constructed picture: it had nothing to do with bourgeois satiety or •Americanism of the spirit' With the emergence of the Chinese threat, however, this portrait had to be redrawn.3 The same series of historical events that had prompted the ruling Brezhnevist Centre to develop a policy of detente toward the accursed West, prompted the Russian Right to develop an ideological alternative to that policy. This was a task of colossal intellectual complexity for which the ideologists of the Establishment Right, with their secondary-school level knowledge of history, were quite unsuited, Genuinely talented people were needed — real intellectuals, who in Russia have traditionally been found in opposition to the regime.