From this point of view, Veche's proposal for creating a 'second Russia' in Siberia appears quite realistic The need to create a strong rear will compel the regime, which is powerless to establish it by bureaucratic Soviet methods, to bring about the voluntary colonization of Siberia. 'Millions of zealots' led by 'priests deprived of their status, dissenters deprived of work and publ ; careers'37 would move on to unsettled lands in Siberia and transform them into a new Slavophile Atlantis; 'only Siberia can safeguard freedom, and the Fatherland, and Soviet aspirations.'38
Hence, the divis on of Russia into urbanized European and peasant Siberian, Marx st European and Orthodox Siberian, forms the ba: s of Veche s liberal Utopia. It is a deliberate gambit. The new As at ; Russia ws. supposed to sacrifice — if only for the time be ng — its European ancestor: 'Siberia can be settled only if there exists a ngid po tical counterweight in European Russia.'39
The gradual influence — and success — of the 'second Russia will one day change the situation in the European part of the country. A truly Russ an renaissance — the creation of hitherto completely unknown forms of peasant Russian Orthodox civ nation — would lead to the transformation of the whole country and ultimately to the triumph of the Russian 'cultural- historical type'.
All that would be needed, to make tf is happen, would be to awaken the Russian Orthodox peasant soul in the Soviet leaders, who, after all, also had 'if not a peasant mother, then at least a peasant grandmother' (and an Orthodox one at that). 'I do not think', Osipov declared, 'that there are no sobre minds with л the Soviet state apparatus.'40
The Other Face of Veche
Experts may object that it was by no means only the isolationist doctrines of Danilevskii that inspired Veche, but also the messianic ideal of the Slavophiles and of Dostoevskii, and that the journal contains plenty of aggressive chauvinism and Black Hundreds material in the spirit of 'Chalmaevism', or even the National Socialism of Ivan Shevtsov.41 All this is true, but these are objections that should be raised with Veche, and its 'liberal' face. The liberal nationalist plans of Veche which have been considered up to now not only did not constitute the whole of 'patriotic Russian' public op/ »n of the early 1970s, they were not even dominant in it. The most nteresting statement of the 'messianic' point of view is Mikhail Antonov's article, •The Slavophiles'Teachings - The Highest Flight ot Popular National Sell-Awareness in the
Antonov saw it as part of his object to demonstrate the 'opposition between Western and Russian views ... in all spheres of life'43 and to expose the 'rootless cosmopolitanism' of the Russian (and Soviet) intelligentsia which acts as a harmful lobby for 'Western views . He intended to show that, 'Leninism has incomparably more in common with Russian Orthodoxy and Slavophilism than with Marxism and Catholicism',44 and therefore 'only a union of Russian Orthodoxy with Leninism can yield an adequate world-view of the Russian people which will synthesize the whole, centuries-long Ufe-expcnence of the nation.'45
As we have seen, the liberal wing of Veche — following Danilevski
regards the West as, so to speak, another species of the genus mankind. Therefore, provided there was an Iron Curtain, Russia would react to the West's 'decay' and its gradual transformation into 'ethnographic material' in a mainly contemplative way, with almost total indifference. Antonov relates to the West (and to the 'cosmopolitans' who represent it within Russia) with the undsguiscd hatred of a fanatical missionary calling for a crusade against inFdels. For him, 'the people and states of the West have outlived their age and are dying . . they shall inevitably soon perish; moreover, not by a sudden attack, but because its vital forces are dryng up. They are tired of living; the whole West is m a bi nd alley.'46
The liberals ol Veche (together with Damlevskii) would reply to it thus: if Antonov thinks that the Western peoples have a 'false world view . . and they cannot in principle correctly conceive of the way out of their dead end',47 such is the law of nature; we haven't the power either to help or to prevent it. Amen. Antonov, however, draws a very different conclusion. The 'false world-view' of the West seems to him so dangerous and infectious (almost like religion was for Lenin) that it draws the Russian people to the edge of the abyss as well Why? He speaks of the 'organic properties of the English character which render Anglican —Puritan circles eternal, incorrigible and sworn enemies of the Russian people.'48 Hut the main danger — insofar as Antonov's rather incoherent article lends itself to rational interpretation
lies in the fact that these Anglican — Puritan circles are only a kind of executive organ for the 'false world-view', while i's essence is to be found elsewhere. It is no coincidence that, 'the founder of all contemporary Western philosophy — that religion without faith — was the Jew Spmoza.' It is also no accident that, 'the roots of the materialistic tendency in philosophy go back to the depths of the Jewish ethnic character.'49
If one were to say that Dar levskii looked at the West as a 'dual foundation Romano-Germai. с cultural-historical type', then Antonov regarded it as a 'dual-foundation Jewish-Puritanical cultural-historical type'. The trouble is that one of these types — the Jewish — has wormed its way into the very heart of Russia. It maKes up the soul of the 'lumpen' whom Antonov despises (that is how, for some reason, Antonov refers to Russia's western :ed intelligentsia, whom Lobanov before him called 'educated shopkeepers' and Solzhenitsyn after him called 'smatterers'). This 'lumpen' stubbornly destroys mother Russia day in and day out, before everyone's eyes. Thus she must begin ridding the world of this devil's seed by eliminating it first at home.
To initiate this process, Antonov needs not Osipov's feeble kind of loyalty, but an act; ^e alliance with the state — for the immediate restitution of the 'cosmopolitan campaign' that was interrupted by Stalin's death. A union of Len. sm with Russian Orthodoxy is needed to form the foundation for a restoration of Stalinism in order to deal once and for all with the 'lumpen':
At the present time, the same task arises in all areas of the life of the Russian people: to beat back the attack of rootless and cosmopolitan elements, to repel the Western forms, alien to its spirit, which have been foisted upon the people, and to return to age-old Russian origins, while assuring their further development.50