At the same time, Solzhenitsyn's reader is not allowed to forget that the course of this history was altered by a Jew. 'Permit me to remind you', Bogrov says, 'that to this dav we live under the domination of Black Hundreds leaders The Jews will never forget the Krushevans, Dubrovins, and Purishkeviches And where is Gertscnshtein? And Yollos? Where are thousands of mutilated Jews [men, women and children with their stomacns ripped open and their noses and ears cut off]?"7 Even a disciplined emigre critic, who does not permit himself to go beyond the bounds of Aesopian language, was compelled to note that, 'From the very beginning, the name Bogrov is surrounded in the book by almost exclusively Jewish names . . . There are almost no non- Jewish names to be found around Bogrov's [in the book] although in the [historical] documents they are more than half . . . For Solzhenitsyn it is not so important that Bogrov was a sleaze as it is that he was a Jew.'8 '1 have fought for the good and happiness of the Jewish people', Bogrov says on the day of 1 s hang ng. Solzhen tsyn underscores this: 'That was hir. sole piece of testimony which didn't change.'9 'Here Bogrov was not scheming or inventing a story He remained true to his people to the end.'10
An evil design
Thus, on the second of September of the year 1911, in the Kiev city theatre, the Jew Mordecliai Bogrov, heeding the 'three thousand-year- old calling' of his cunning race, murdered the Russian Orthodox monarchy: 'with these bullets an entire dynasty was killed 11 'The course of history of a people 170-million strong' was severed that day forcibly and irreversibly — and in this Solzhenitsyn manages to establish the 'demon's' guiit. In this way, the central contradiction of August 1914 was cleared aside by the second pattern of behaviour of the Russian Idea's proponents ... or was it?
In fact, haven't we already heard from Solzhenitsyn that, a certain 'decisive revolution . . . altered the course of our history and of the entire earth as well' — not the bullets of Mordechai Bogrov? There, one recalls, he was talking about February 1917 rather than September 1911. The 'decisive' character of the February Revoluuon was that the liberals with their 'constant wailing for rights' 'smashed apart' the Orthodox monarchy and toppled a 300-year-old dynasty. How was i then that Bogrov, hanged a few years earlier, managed to murder this very same dynasty with one shot? What was it that actually 'altered the course of our people and the entire earth' — a Jev ish terrorist or the liberal revolution?
As we see, Solzhenitsyn is again faced witk a dramatic dilemma. In the process of removing one contradiction, there has arisen a new and deeper one. Can it be that those 230 pages that rum the structure of the novel are all for nothing? How can this new problem be resolved? How can we equate the liberal revolution with the single act of a Jewish terrorist? This problem is so vast that a Diabolei ie II has to be programmed into its solution. Only bv attribuiing superhuman significance to a single terrorist act, only by raising il to the status of absolute Evil, whose sinister designs we are not able to fathom — iust as we cannot know God's plans — is the author abie to span the chronological gap and combine September 1911 and February 1917 into one. Both the despicable Bogrov and the hateful liberals eventually turn out to be tools of the same all-encompassing EvJ that has raised its sword against Russia. Like Parvus Bogrov has to combine in his character traus of both a Jew and the devil. But whereas the demonic essence of Izraif Parvus was presented to us as a behemoth, Mordcchai Bogrov's appears to the reader irf a more traditional form of the biblical serpent
The aemon Jew
The demonizing of Bogrov happens gradually. It is introduced carefully, at first by completely unnoticed strokes Bogrov manages to slip through noiselessly and invisibly between the revolution and the police'.12 A few pages later, someone talking with him suddenly sees him 'with his two front teeth protruding, they pushed forward when his upper lip rose in conversation.'13 A little further on, he crawls along a pole that is 'perfectly smooth and without notches or knots. It will have to be crawled up . . without holding on to anything',14 'his whole body rubbing and creeping along in an unreal manner'.15 Pages later, the resemblance grows: Bogrov 'with his elongated squeezed head, constantly a bit tilted to one side, and lips perpetually ajar'.16 Neither fangs nor venom are yet mentioned, only his 'narrow head a bit tilted to the side',17 only how he 'casts a spell, like the song of a rare bi»"d, stretching out his neck and seeming kind even to his enemies at such moments'.18 But here, for the first time, the metaphor becomes very clear: 'he wanted only to deposit between them an enervating drop of venom.'19
Now the reader has no doubt: a serpent is before him. Bogrov cbnibed up that pole 'twisting himself around and around',20 with his bewitchi lg gaze and flattish head a bit to the side'.21 The author even feels sorry for him — how tired all the muscles of his coils must have been!'22 But all this time 'those few drops necessary for the fatal moment must have been accumulating, oozing — into his brain? his craw? his tooth?'23 Finally, this is how Stolypin saw Bogrov when the 'fatal moment' arr red: 'he walked like he was coiling and uncoiling. Th i and tall, in black tails ... a long-faced young Jew.'24 Then he struck, and 'slithering along his black back, ran away.'25 The image of the young Jew blended with that of the serpent. Only was it really the biblical one?
The allegorical snake - "
Undoubtedly, Solzhenitsyn resorted to this new Diabolerie out of desperat on — because of the impossibility of reconciling by any earthly artisl : means the contradiction between reality, which repudiates the Russian Idea, and the party line. But in order to do so, doesn't he himself — all too often and all too precar ously — have to creep in an unreal manner'? Isn't the fine dne 'without notches or knots' that separates an -liberalism from the Black Hundreds and the Black Hundreds, in turn, from Nazism itself all too smooth?
'The allegor ;al snake', says Walter Lacqueur. 'which played a great role n the Russian anl Semitic literature was imported into Germany in the twenties.'26 In the next decade, already under the Nazis, Grigor Bostunich — 'the missing link between the Black Hundreds and the Nazis'27 — searched out i some archives an ancient map of Europe being encoiled by a snake. According to his commentary, tf is snake symbolized exactly the same thing that it symbol ^es in Solzhenitsyn (only with the well-read Bostunich it was on a global scale): a history of successful attempts by the Jews to 'break states that have stood n the way of their drive for world dominati in. Among these were Athens in 429 ВС, Augustus's Rome, Carl V's Spain, Louis XIV's France, and, of course, Russia in 1917. It was for this very'd ;covery' that Bostunich was made an honorary professor in the SS The parallel drawn by Solzhenitsyn between Bogrov as serpent and the traditional symbolism of the Black Hundreds and Nazism did not escape the attention of emigre literary c/" tics: 'in the very miage of the Serpent who strikes down a Slavic knight whUe he is making the s gn of the cross, an anti-semite could without difficulty see a parallel with his favourite book The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'28 However, one hardly needs to be an anti-sen te to see this transparent parallel m the new edition of August 1914. What is it that keeps 'accumulating' in Solzhenitsyn's 'brain? or craw? or tooth?' that makes h'm incapable of resisting the demonic temptation to idenlify the Jew with Satan