There never was such a thing as Stalinism (either as a doctrine, or as a path of national life, or as a state system), and official circles in our country [!] as well as the Chinese leaders, have every right to insist on this.150
In general, in all controversies, Solzhenitsyn invariably refers to Soviet political textbooks of Stalin’s time as books that contain indisputable truth. How could it be otherwise, if such and such a statement appears in the History of the CPSU: Short Course? Fully in the spirit of orthodox dogmatics he subverts bourgeois democracy, for the Twentieth Party Congress showed its ‘defects’ and today the West is ‘in a state of political crisis and spiritual confusion’.151
Solzhenitsyn directs his hatred against the idea of democratic socialism and Communist reformism, insisting ‘that socialism is inherently flawed, that it is altogether unrealizable in a pure form.’152 Whenever something is said in samizdat that is favourable to Marx or Lenin, he sees in this the ‘thought processes’ of people ‘who write for the censor’ — even though he had acknowledged that for the opposition of the sixties, ‘Marxism was not compulsory ballast required by the censors.’153 Hatred of socialist ideas easily develops into hatred of democracy — which shows very well, a negativo, the profound kinship between the two ideas.
Solzhenitsyn, Shafarevich and the national-Christians see themselves as the heirs of Russian religious philosophy at the beginning of this century, but they are mistaken. The Russian religious philosophers were neither nationalists nor anti-socialists. Vladimir Solovev fought resolutely against nationalism. Berdyaev saw in nationalism ‘the alluring temptation of imperialism’ generated by Russian messianic thinking, a temptation which had to be overcome. In general he recognized ‘the Russian idea’ as a fact of national tradition, and tried to include it in a context that was ‘universalist’ (or, as we should say, internationalist). He was not anti-Marxist, for he frequently emphasized that he owed much to Marx.
The outstanding Russian idealists were opposed to anti-Semitism. Berdyaev considered the Jews the people nearest to the Russians in the spiritual sense: ‘it is not merely a matter of chance that precisely in these two peoples there exists a vigorous messianic consciousness.’154 By an irony of fate, the anti-Semitic VSKhSON proclaimed Berdyaev as its prophet. Such contradictions betray imposture, whether conscious or unconscious. Just as the Stalinists try to cover themselves with the authority of Marxism and socialism, the Rights exploit for their own ends the prestige of Christianity and the names of Berdyaev, Bulgakov, Solovev or Dostoevsky. Whether they actually are Christians is not for me to judge, but I am profoundly convinced that Christianity, like Marxism, is incompatible with nationalism, because they both start from the idea of the human personality, not from that of a chosen people. It is just this universalism of Christianity that has ensured its success as a world religion. The lie of the New Right about the ‘Christian’ character of their ideas is akin to the official lie about the ‘Marxist’ character of the neo-Stalinist despotism.
To Solzhenitsyn the ideology of the system is even more hateful than the system itself. In this respect he is a typical exponent of the worldview of the new ‘back-to-the-soil movement’. Agursky, analysing their literature published legally in the Soviet Union, has noted the basic identity of their ideas with those of Solzhenitsyn. This literature ‘is not aimed at those who are trying to change the political system. The political system is a matter of indifference to them.’155 These ideas are not due to the barbed wire of the censorship:
It is not difficult to observe that the movement’s positive programme coincides on many points with the ideas of Solzhenitsyn, especially as expressed in his Letter to Soviet Leaders. We find here the same indifference to the political system. They both hate the ideology alone…156
In fact Solzhenitsyn writes, summing up the significance of his Letter to Soviet Leaders — the first manifesto of the New Right to become known world-wide: T put it to them: get rid of the Communist ideology, if only of that for the time being.’157 The quotation is interesting, not because it shows how Solzhenitsyn’s style has degenerated since he has been living as an émigré publicist but because it is indicative politically. If it is only a matter of ‘getting rid of the Communist ideology’, the Soviet system may be fully transformable into an ‘authoritarian order based on love of mankind’.158 Thus Solzhenitsyn actually admits that the Communist ideology does not in the least express the essential nature of the system, but is some sort of extraneous ‘weapon’ it uses in fighting for the sympathy of Western public opinion, and so on. But the most important thing is that Solzhenitsyn’s idea of resorting to the proposal of a dialogue with the statocracy is inherently logicaclass="underline" they have much in common,159 above all — however paradoxical this may be — ideology. Ernest Mandel is quite right when he says that Solzhenitsyn is ‘to a large extent himself a prisoner of the Stalinist ideology’.160 The publication of the Letter to Soviet Leaders and the statements by anti-Marxist dissidents (especially the émigrés) evoked dismay and bewilderment not only among the Lefts but also in Western liberal circles and among Soviet intellectuals faithful to the ideals of 1956. ‘Indeed, Solzhenitsyn appears to distrust the very freedom for which he has so long fought,’ and his views ‘in a curious way reflect the Soviet dogma on which he was raised,’ we read in the American conservative periodical Commentary,161 ‘This is a kind of utopia in which the complex and dynamic problems of society are settled once and for all…’162 Thinking of this sort is typical of dogmatists. He seeks to oppose the Soviet ideology, yet ‘he arms himself with the same weapons, uses similar techniques and adopts a comparable manner,’ writes A. Besançon.163
Anna Akhmatova, too, ‘when asked one day about Solzhenitsyn, uttered the words sovetskii chelovek, a Soviet man.’164 In Besançon’s view, Solzhenitsyn, having been formed in the Stalin school and by the official ideology, turns to nineteenth-century Russia in the hope of overcoming thereby his own ‘Sovietness’ but is capable only of seeing in past history, through an irony of fate, those ideas that are close to Stalin’s.
‘Certain accusations by Solzhenitsyn and Shafarevich oddly resemble in tone the ideological campaigns of the period between the thirties and the fifties,’ wrote the Hungarian Marxists Bence and Kis.165 The source, paradoxically, of Solzhenitsyn’s notion is the vulgar Soviet view of 1917 as a milestone of good,’ wrote the Soviet émigrés Solovyov and Klepikova in the American left-wing periodical Dissent.166 ‘Solzhenitsyn wishes to be an inverted Lenin,’ concludes Besançon.167 But the Lenin he imitates is not the real Lenin of history, it is the Lenin of the Stalinist textbooks.
Such quotations could be multiplied, for on this matter people of very different views find themselves in agreement. The real theoretical interest, however, lies not in polemicizing against the New Right and convicting them of repeating official dogmas, but in trying to understand how they ‘came to this way of life’. People change, and their views with them. It is not enough for us merely to record the turn to the Right by many oppositionist intellectuals; it is more interesting to analyse the psychological and ideological mechanisms that have brought this turn about. Furthermore, when we look more closely we perceive that the ‘Solzhenitsyn syndrome’ is a very much more widespread malady among oppositionists than appears at first sight. Many even of those who do not agree with his views are very close to his method of thinking.