I he old Slavophile drama is repeating itself once more, only this time ill a twentieth-century setting. Like the Slavophiles of the last century, these people were the first to speak about an Orthodox renaissance'. Also uke the Slavophiles, the\ expended a great deal of effort in awakening the 'Orthodox patriotic patriarchal simpleton of their Utopian dream. Now — exactly like the Slavophiles before them — they tind they have awoken a monster, quite unlike am thing they expected and to whom they cannot even speak in the same language. The 'Orthodox patriotic" reader they awakened demanded not only that they be reconciled with the detestable 'soul-destroying communism in the name of saving Russia, but also proof of their own Aryan credentials.
The transition
Thus, The Nation Speaks and the 'Critical Notes ol a Russian Man' showed that national-liberalism is doomed to become the philosophy of an isolated sectarian group of preservers of antiquated Slavophile museum pieces — latter-day Shipovs — whose worn-out programmes interested no one at the beginning of the twentieth century and interest no one today (least of all their own readers, who have already gone way ahead of them). To please these readers, they could still create epic allegorical images of the .Jew/Satan/Destroyer of Russia or publish a journal like K<jntinent, where they could permit themselves to flirt ever so slightly with fascism, declaring it a 'movement of the era [and] sign of the times'.4 Hut to state that., 'only the socialist system stands in the way of [the Jews'] world domination,'5 or to publish a journal entitled 'Death to the Zionist Invaders!^ that is beyond them, ft turns out that there are limits to how far contemporary liberal Nationalism v/jll go, just as there were for classical Slavophilism.
To make the jump across the gulf tfiat separates them from the theoretical physicist Tiapkm a kind of intellectual revolution is needed. All their old idols and ideals have to be scrapped, and a totally new vision of history adopted instead. In other words, what is required is a transition from L-Nationalism to F-Nationalisrn. That is why in the 1970s the Russian New Right desperately needed a Sergei Sharapov of its own, a man who would emerge from the 'Orthodox patriotic masses' (sharing their basic beliefs; and who could channel their dark hatred toward non-Russians into an intellectual alternative to national- liberalism. An 'instrumental leader', as sociologists say, was required, someone capable of reconciling the intellectual vision of the Russian fdea with the expectations of its grass roots, of ending the breach between the two and decisively casting aside the liberal illusions of the old Slavophiles of an 'immobile Aksakov cast'.
The next chapter is devoted to the first attempt, by Gennadi Shimanov, to re-create an ideology of F-Nationalism, to the first candidate for the role of a Sergei Sharapov (a rebel and heretic within the Russian Idea) for the Russian New Right. For now I will only try to show what mind-bending complexity Shimariov's task presented him with.
Russia vs Judaea
We find among Solzhenitsyn the novelist's causes for the collapse of the Orthodox monarchy — the 'court camarilla', the 'retired idlers' in the state council, the 'die-hard portion of the nobility', the symbolic behemoth Parvus and serpent Bogrov, and even the 'certain thousarid- year-old calling of the cunning Jewish race. Solzhenitsyn's thinking on the subject is thus dominated by a mixture of sociological and demonic factors. The 'Orthodox patriotic' reader, however, had grown sick of symbolism and metaphysical allegory, and sociology was as good as useless to him. Such a person is, above all eminently practical he needs the names and secret rendezvous addresses of the conspirators; he needs what Solzhenitsyn provided in the Gulag Archipelago photos of those responsible for bringing down the Ortnodox monarchy — the Jew villains.
But you don't have one word about the true reasons for the defeat and collapse [of the monarchy]. There is no trace of the vile activities of the band of Jew capitalists to whom almost the entire press and a large part of industry in Russia belonged. There is no Rasptuin, who was placed in power and used to d.\ ide and demoralize the country by the Vinaver and Aron Saniuilovich Sirnanovich clique, no treachery, no Mit'ka Rubinshtein and the other international Zionist bankers who strove to crush Russia come what may, no [mention of how the] Russian and German peoples were set upon one another [so that] the Rothschilds in London, Paris and Vienna and the Russian [Jewish] Poliakovs and Ginzbergs could make their gold from these nations blood 6
Thus, m the vision of the world held by the awakened 'Orthodox patriotic' consciousness, Jews not only brought down the Russian Orthodox monarchy, but also unleashed World War 1 Essentially, the reader demands of Solzhenitsyn, if he is going to be his spiritual guide, the very thing which Solzhem'tsyn demands of the Soviet leadership — to 'live not by lies'. In so far as the reader, like Solzhenitsyn, is convinced that 'the truth is one', and that this truth is known to him, he simply cannot understand why a person who has awakened this realization in hun would play the hypocrite. Why doesn't his mighty voice let his thunder across the whole face of creation, as it did across Russia, leaving no doubt in any honest soul thai the Jews are the source of all the world's evil? Is he really a follower of Orthodoxy? Perhaps he is a proselyte . . . proselytes are usually more cruel than native Judeans.'7 Maybe he is just afraid?
They assure me you are a brave person. It's easy to be brave when you are printed in Zionist organs, when at the slightest jamming of you every [Radio] Free Europe starts to cry out You know very well that special zionist councils are involved in the control of these stations. Just try to speak out against the Zionists! Do you have enough courage for that? You have patrons in our country as well . With this letter I am subjecting myself to greater danger than you. Not one radio station will ever broadcast it.8
Yes, it was Solzhenitsyn who had himself instilled this reader with the Russian Idea; he who had given him this source of insight. But after this reader had matured, among the many other things that he saw for the first time, was the spectacle of his teacher not daring to take the last decisive step to the 'truth'. Thus he began to doubt his teacher — to lose faith in his human qualities and even his Orthodoxy. Eventually, he became disillusioned with him altogether and denounced him: 'Your Orthodoxy is also a false pose. A vainglorious knowledge of folk adages, customs, and holidays, not faith, draws your blasphemous pen across the paper. You even call Christ a Jew, though even I, a person . . . unschooled in theology, understand that God has no use for nationality.'9
Like Solzhenitsyn, the author of this letter writes the word God with a capital G. He too stands on the firm soil of Orthodoxy and feels not the slightest personal enmity toward Solzhenitsyn f'God forbid, I do not wish you ill'),10 yet everything n Solzhenitsyn seems suspect to him. For example, a Jewish engineer Il'ya Isaakovich Arkhangorodsk i appears in August 19J4, who, it turns out, also dreams about 'the creation of Russia' What could this mean to the reader Solzhenitsyn has awakened? Just one thing: 'a pack of lies' 11