‘Men who poured millions into Yeltsin’s re-election campaign.’
‘Men who ran ticket-scalping scams, Avva pyramid schemes, and drove the Menatap Bank’s records off a bridge into the Dybna River’, Herman added. ‘You know, I was one of the people to work with Vailyev on the public letter from Pamyat to Boris Yeltsin… “Your Jewish entourage… have already made good use of you and don’t need you anymore. You will share the destiny of Napoleon and Hitler, etc., who were Zionist-maintained dictators… The aim of international Zionism is to seize power worldwide. For this reason Zionists struggle against national and religious traditions of other nations, and for this purpose they devised the Freemasonic concept of cosmopolitanism”.’
‘Like you, I sympathise with Vladimir Miloserdov and former General Igor Rodionov, who demanded that the oligarchs “must return what they have looted in Russia and publicly repent to the Russian people for the crimes that Jewish terrorists and extremists have committed”.’
‘I am a historian of the Michael the Archangel Russian People’s Union. Before that, in the 1970s, I was active in the Vityaz, you say Knight Movement, with people like the artist Ilya Glazunov, the historian Malyshev, and Lebedev, a colonel in the MVD. We formed the National Patriotic Front in 1987.’
‘Is that the one Aleksander Barkashov’s people split from in 1990?’
‘Yes, that is so.’
‘And there was Valeriy Yemelyanov, who wrote the book Dezionisation. He was a neo-pagan, right?’
‘A mystic. Pamyat translates as ‘Memory’ in English, I think.’ Herman went on, undeterred. ‘Until recently, Germany was our chief trading partner, and the EU was the market for over 50 percent of our exports. Yet, so- called Westerners like Bernard-Henri Lévy, A André Glucksmann, and Alain Finkielkraut oppose our economic independence. In the centuries before these parasites began to feed off us, Russia controlled 8,660,000 square miles of land, the largest land empire in all of history, growing at a rate of 50 square miles per year for 400 years.’
‘Indeed, the conquest of Kokand, Bokhara, and Khiva brought the whole of Central Asia under Tsarist rule.’
‘But today, it is like we live in a science fiction story, Zamyatin’s We!’
8.
Rossiia Est Sviataia Rus.
Tom stepped up to the podium, warm applause greeting him as he bent into the spotlight, reaching to adjust the microphone.
‘Good afternoon’, he began. ‘It is generally acknowledged by mainstream anthropologists, linguists, and archaeologists that our common ancestors spoke a Proto-Indo-European dialect some 6,000 years ago, in the very heart of Eurasia. Liberal and Left-leaning academics, particularly in Western universities, may choose to ignore this inconvenient fact, but they can no longer flat-out deny the efficacy of such an assertion or the extensive field-work carried out by Vyachislav Ivanov into root languages, and Gennadii Zdanovich’s archaeologists at Arkaim. Works by David Anthony and K Jones-Bley have led many great thinkers to the conclusion that the Sintashta-Petrovka culture, of which the Mandala City of Arkaim is the best preserved example, is in fact the ancient, 4,000-year-old capital of the founders of our so-called Western civilisation, those very Caucasoids who invaded Northern India, rode across the Gobi to trade with the Khans, and buried their flame-haired mummies in Urumchi. Our women were tattooed with the crescent moon of the goddess and our men with the sun representing the male god. I challenge anyone to look into the eyes of the beauty of Loulan, a woman born into the Tocharian culture of the Tarim basin nearly 4,000 years ago, and find a trace of Mongoloid blood.
‘She, like her Solutrean kin on the Atlantic rim, those adventurers who moved across the ice bridge to America, would eventually see their small, fragile settlements exterminated by second peoples, the Han, Goturks, and Uyghur tribes of northwest China’s Bogda and Tian Shan mountains in the first case, and the Yupik aboriginals of Beringia coming down from the Bering Straits in the latter instance. Could this very habitation at Arkaim be the one referred to in the Avesta and the Vedas?’
The audience was rapt. ‘Indeed, the scientific community, resistant to anything that challenged the liberal narrative, were at first unwilling to admit that this sophisticated people was living parallel with the Levantines of Egypt and Babylon. Arkaim, older than Troy and Rome, was equipped with a storm sewage system, timber structures imbued with fire-resistant resins, and heating and cooling systems for every dwelling. Archeoastronomists even identified the lauburu planning pattern of the city as being so precise, one arc-minute, that it was only with the arrival of the almagest, two millennia later, that such precision was once again attained by mankind.’
Tom continued to enthral his spectators for a further 20 minutes, talking about the Yamnaya DNA from western Russia spreading into Europe 4,000 years ago and the different strands of the human tree, before turning to the central theme of his polemic. ‘And today, we see a vast shadow creep over Eurasia once again. A pestilence which threatens to tip the geopolitical tectonic plates as the East moves West.’ He took a sip of water. ‘And from where does this shadow arise? It emanates from those who jealously guard their monopolies over your labour and resent your new-found freedom after centuries of servitude. But already, this transformation in fortune, this hemispheric shift of the last few days, offers us new possibilities for renewal and rebirth. Can we, the Europid descendants of the nomadic adventurers of which I have spoken, rise again after the collapse?’ Tom stopped to pour more water into the tumbler resting on the lectern. ‘Mainstream historians are looking increasingly aghast as the views of a controversial genius like Anatole Klyosov begin to chime with the material being unearthed in the most unpromising geological strata. Every day, it is becoming clearer and clearer that the anecdotes of Ancient Greece about the Pillar Peoples are being proved correct in the vastness of the steppes…’
There was almost exaltation in his words. All eyes were on him. ‘There is another way’, he insisted. ‘Our original way. Ar-ka means sky and Im means earth. Arkaim is a place where the earth reaches the sky. In Alex Sparkey’s words, the East and West are fused here. Today, in Russia, we feel that mankind is faced by the necessity to choose Oneness. Western culture must come into unity with Eastern Orthodox wisdom. If this happens, the hegemony that we once took for granted in the Land of Cities will be restored.’ With that flourish, he brought the house down. Grigori and Dimitry stormed the stage to congratulate him. ‘You have conjured up Iliodor’s vision once again!’ they shouted as a standing ovation resounded in the auditorium.
Ekaterina took an urgent call in the middle of the after-conference dinner. At first, she could barely make out the words over the singing of White Army songs: ‘We will march to fight for Holy Russia, and spill as one our blood for her!’ When she did comprehend what had happened, she dragged Tom from the room, flagging down a taxi to her grandfather’s district.
Chasing down torch beams, tripping over hose pipes in the smoke-filled air, they could hear the coarse dialects of firemen using spray to clear the bitter tang of the accelerant used to firebomb the block. Her grandfather’s apartment was full of scorched plaster and charred books. Ekaterina was crying, imagining the worst from the very moment the emergency was raised.