Of course, Chalmaev and Solzhenitsyn, the National Bolsheviks and Dunlop s vozrozhdentsy, are all opposed to each other in almost everything concerning Russia's present. Yet, we have seen how miraculously they transformed themselves into allies in all things concerning her past — and, what s more important, her future. Are not Chalmaev's 'ancho* 4cs', who saved Russia from the abyss of sin, and Solzhenitsyn's 'semi-literate preachers of religion' twins, and Chalmaev ; 'tsars' a model for Solzhenitsyn's 'leaders'? We nave already spoken of the similarity between the educated shopkeepers and the smatterers. Thus both Solzhenitsyn and Chalmaev have pinpointed three chief components that determine the structure of Russian society, and they have proved to be identical for both the National Bolshe\ ks and the vozrozhdentsy.
Summary of From Under the Rubble
he concept of a world crisis, 'reminiscent of the transition from the M ddle Ages to modern times' — a crisis arising from the total secula zation of culture in the Renaissance and inevitably lead: ig either to the correction of this mistake, that is, the crea' on of a new religious civilization, or to the ruin of humankind.
The concept of democracy as an historical distortion, which arose from the great n stake of the Renaissance and led mankind ;nto the dead end of rreligion and the Gulag.
The concept of 'two freedoms' — internal and external — which leads to 'moral freedom' as 'the moral goal of the nation' being counterposed to intellectual and political freedom.
The concept of 'enlightened authoritarianism' as an alternative to both totalitarianism and democracy.
The concept that the contemporary world is made up of three principal components (common to both From Under the Rubble and Veche): a threatening 'totalita *an' China, a decaying democratic West, and a Russ i try .ig to resurrect herself w th an 'enlightened authoritarian' system. There is, in ad< tion, the related concept that Soviet society is also made up of three principal components (common to both From Under the Rubble and Molodaia gvardia)-. namely, the dangerous 'smatterers', the 'leaders' and 'the semi-literate preachers of re^gion'.
The concept of 'the nation as personality' be ig 'God's irrevocable plan for the world', which justi es imperial isolationism.
The concept of the intelligentsia as a harmful secuiar growth on the body of society, which effectively simulates a national elite and thereby hinders the formation of a real one.
The concept of a new 'sacrificial elite, brought up not so much in libraries as on spiritual suffering', summoned to enter nto a
dialogue with the 'leaders' and on the basis of the need for a 'national rebirth', to assure Russia's progress toward a salutary 'enlightened authoritarianism'
Notes
I certainly cannot be satisfied with such папе explanations as, for example, John Bowling offers when he says that, '[Solzhenitsyn's] soul is Russian and not Western' and therefore [he] cannot be understood in Western terms' (Commentary, September 1974, p. 14). This is the explanation which in the nineteenth century Chaadaev heard from Yazykov, and Herzen from Bulgarin. Russian reactionaries have always justified their devotion to authoritarianism by their mysterious Russian soul' which is not to be understood in Western terms.
Solzhenitsyn, Pis'mo vozhdiam Sovetskogo Soiuza. Paris: YMCA Press, 1974, p. 49 lEnglish translation by Hilarie Sternberg, New York Harper and Row, 1976, p. 57.]; Konstantin Aksakov in Teoria gosudarstva и slavianoftlov, St. Petersburg: 1898 p. 41
Vestnik RKhD, No. 112-13, p. 226.
No matter how one interprets this startling coincidence, for me it once again tends to confirm — experimentally — my central hypotheses: (a) the political system which became established in Russia as a result of her first counter-reform (or 'revolution from above'), that of Ivan the Terrible in the mid-sixteenth century, developed not progressively but in a spiral way; (b) in each new cycle of the historical spiral, similar ideological currents have to start their development all over again from the beginning, thus recapitulating all the stages through which their predecessors passed in the preceding historical c\cle.
Solzhenitsyn Letter, p. 5.
Ibid., pp. 17, 21.
(bid., p. 15
(bid
9 Jeanne Kirkpatrick, Dictatorship and Double Standards, Simon and Shuster, N Y 1982.
Solzhenitsyn, 'Na vozvrate dykhania 1 soznania' ['On the Return of Breathing and Consciousness'] in Iz-pod glyb, Paris, YMCA Press: 1974, pp. 7-28.
Let me cite just one example — that of myself. As the reader already knows, I, in Solzhenitsyn's opinion, harbour a 'hatred for all things Russian In other words, I am accused of the same thing which the author of the 'Critical Notes' on Veche accused Solzhenitsyn ol. Moreover, I was also'a communist journalist in Moscow for seventeen years known to no one' inasmuch as I was 'published only in Young Communist and lesser [fora]'. It is true that the open and easily verifiable lie about Young Communist and lesser [fora] he himself deleted from subsequent reprints, so we won t bother to discuss that But what about my alleged seventeen years of journalism however? Where did he get this figure from? Mv book jacket biography says nothing of the kind. It is obvious that Solzhenitsyn made this up. But why not say ten or twenty years? One has to assume that he thought an unexpected, non-round number would sound more authentic and give the impression he could back it up with evidence. This old tried-and-true bluff was highly effective under the Stalinist terroristic system, where a plausible sounding denunciation could cost someone his or her life. So much for Solzhenitsyn's call on us to 'Live Not bv Lies'. For an analogous case see Tlya Z berberg "Neobkhodimy Ra/.govor s Sol/her tsvnm' (A Needed Dialogue with Solzhenitsyn), Great Britain, 1976.
Iz-pod glyb, p. 20.
(bid., p. 21. Compare: 'Look at the West. The peoples . . . have been carried away by vain strivings, . . . and have started to believe in the possibility of a perfect government, have made republics, and have built constitutions, . . . and have become poor in the souls, and on the point of collapsing . . . any minute.' This was Aksakov in 1856 (Teoria . . . , p. 31).
Iz-pod glyb. p. 25.
Ibid., p. 22. Emphasis added.
tbid., p. 25.
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 27.
Solzhenitsyn, Pis'mo . . . , p. 11.
Ibid., p. 17. Capital letters in the original.
Vestnik RKhD, No. 118, p. 170.
[bid.
Solzhenitsyn, Pis'mo . . . , p. 45.
Voprosy literatury, 1969, No. 5, p. 91.
Vestnik RKhD, No. 117, p. 139.
M. M. Shcherbatov, Istoria rossiyskaia s drevneishikh vrernen, St. Petersburg: 1903, vJ 5, p. 832
Iz-pod glyb, p. 201.
Ibid., p. 203.
Ibid., p. 208.