If the separate existence of the Ukraine really became an issue, its borders would inevitably need to be re-examined. The Ukraine would have to cede to Russia: a) the Crimea, Ы the provinces of Kharkov, Donets, f.ugansk, and Zaporozb'e with their predominantly Russian populations, and c) the provinces of Odessa, Nikolaev, Kherson, Dnepropetrovsk and Sumy, whose populations are to a sufficient degree (sic1) Russified . . . What would remain to the Ukrainians, having no access to the sea and no basic industry, let them figure that out for themselves. Let them also consider the [territorial] claims that might be made by the Poles in the western provinces [of the Ukraine] whose populations are pro-Polish.25
The national uniqueness of the Moldavian people is declared to be 'laughable',26 'patriots' see fit to talk about it only in connection with :oreign appetites for our territory'27 (Rumanian, in this case). Just as allegor. jally, they refer to the right of Russia to put down rebellions in her eastern European empire (having in mind the suppression of the Prague Spring in 1968):
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Those who imagine they understand things, would wish to bridle our statesmen with their understanding. 'Hands Off!', they cry out in the event of any kind of often necessary intervention in the affairs of other countries. They are like a wife who, hearing a cry for help from the street, flings herself upon her husband and doesn't let him go out [to help] . . . What s the value of that kind of understanding? What is it that disi ngi ishes an ideological liberal from a plain philistine? The courage of a deserter?28
I hope the reader recalls the formula of the Russian nationalists that became standard in their discourse after V. Mikhailov used it in his book New Judea. 'The Jewish yoke over the Russian folk,' wrote Mikhailov, 'is an established fact which can be denied only by either complete cret is or scoundrels who are completely indifferent to the Russian nation, her past and the fate of the Russian people.' In full accordance with this tradition of nationalist Russia, The Nation Speaks declares any struggle against the empire as 'either resulting from an inat lily to think things out or an insidious ploy by those who would seek worldwide demoralization and disintegration '29
Once the conversation has turned to 'worldwide demoralization and disintegration', the Jews are inevitably next in the line of fire. Unlike V. Mikhailov, The Nation Speaks does not openly refer to a 'Jewish yoke over the Russian people'. After all, it was written half a century later. Nevertheless, being resourceful, the 'Russian patriots' manage to work it in somehow. Despite their contemptuous treatment of the Belorussians, Ukrainians, Moldavians and Czechs, still their most vicious lines were reserved — as befits any self-respecting followers of F-Nationalism — for the Jews:
Lots of noise is made about anti-semitism in Russia. The Jews pose as a national minority oppressed by the Russians while at the same time conducting a policy of ethnic favouritism. They have virtually monopolized the fields of science and culture. The Russian soil has not yet tost its capacity to give birth to Lomonosovs, but today their path is blocked by the next Germans in tine,[4] while the poor pnveleged' Russians meekly skulk otf to the side And God forbid they should be offended130
The manifesto's conclusion is also referring to Jews when it says, When we speak about the Russian people, we mean people who are genuinely Russian in blood and in spirit. We must put an end to disorderly hybridization.'31
To The Nation Speaks, Jews in Russia play the same role as the 'representatives [of the Third World] sprinkled throughout Amer.can society' do in the USA. They 'seize the platform which the liberals have obligingly set up for them and firmly direct their efforts toward becoming the dominant class.
The New Russian Revolutionaries
VSKhSON and Veche considered imperial treatment of national minorities unseemly, as can be judged from point 83 of VSKhSON's programme or Veche s critique of Danilevskii's imperial theories. For all L-Nationaiism's contradictions, its adherents' critique nevertheless contained an element of protest against the unceremonious oppression of lesser nations. The 'Russian patriots', worried about 'biological degeneration' and 'worldwide miscegenation', openly denounced this protest as 'the courage of deserters
From their manifesto we can clearly see how hopeless liberal Nationalism's case had become by the early 1470s. It was the stillborn product of high-brow intellectuals who were trying to reconcile the savage yearning of the 'patriotic masses' for pogroms with their own refined political schemata. Their audience had no need of such schemata. They thirsted, not for a 'revolution of national liberation but rather for a new — massive and decisive — campaign against 'cosmopolitanism', overt suppression of national minorities and isolation from foreign 'Zionism and Satanism'. The 'patriotic masses' harboured a longing for dictatorship, for the iron hand that would put a stop to 'disorderly hybridization'. They found the genuine expression of their aspirations in The Nation Speaks, not in the equivocal Veche or the anti-Soviet VSKhSON. These 'patriotic masses', as Veche s readers indicated, are Soviet through and through, only they are the people of Soviet dictatorship, not rotten Soviet conservatism. They were opposed not to the Soviet system, but to the corrupt Brezhnev regime. In tl s sense only, are they revolutionaries.
The Dictatorship's Ideological Reorientation
'Revolut m is a transitional state', say the 'Russian patriots'. 'In mathematics such a state is denoted by zero and has neither a positive nor a negative sign'. ... In history, such 'eruptions of the people's vibrant energy are natural phenomena . . . They accompany, as a rule, the periods of the nation's greatest vitality. If in some small portion of the contemporary world, taken by some to represent the whole world, we do not see such explos ans, this indicates that that particular portion of the world has passed its peak period and is headed towards decFne.'32 In the West, we are told, 'the stormy currents of revolution . . flow nto stagnant pools of the shopkeeper mentality'. If, however, Russia manages to avoid such a fate, and 'we have every instinct to do so',33 all our sacril ces shall be rewarded.
Of course, the revolution of the 'Russian patriots' is far removed from VSKhSON's anti-Communist 'revolution of national liberation', 'hey have no need of 'an underground army of liberation which will topple the dictatorship' Their revolution is not against dictatorship, but for it: 'such a feat is only within the strength of a dictatorship';34 'there can be no talk of either the convergence or the ideological capitulation of Russia.'35 'Therefore what is important for us is . . . the dictatorship's ideolog :al reorientation, a kind of ideological revolution in its own way . . . We are striving for a rebirth of the sense of nationality in a confused world, in order that each is aware of his personal responsibility to his nation and to his race.'36
Thus, the 'Russian patriots', capturing the exact mood of the patriotic masses', rejected the sham patriotism of the Brezhnev regime (as did the Young Guards, at the same time, speaking in the name of 'patriotic youth'). However, in contrast to Chalmaev and Lobanov, who had to work within the confines of state censorship, the authors of The Nation Speaks were able to articulate much more openly the sinister Black Hundreds mentality and the yearning of the 'patriotic masses' for Fascism.