Where did Il'va Isaakovich get ideas about the creation of Russia from if the Judaeaii religion . . . teaches him that non-Jews are worse than dogs, that a Jew is duty-bound to deceive non-Jews . . . that he belongs to the chosen people, whose destiny it is to subjugate all other peoples and force them to work for their benefit . . And he had to pay his 'shekel', a tax in gold, (as is paid throughout the world today) to provide the means for an organization which fights to assert the world supremacy of the Jews.12
Moreover, the Jews 'have always hated the Russians and always thought only about themselves, both things which they are trained to do from childhood.'13
Such differences of opinion about August 1914, however, might come under the heading of literary criticism. The real conflict between the 'patriotic reader' and Solzhenitsyn, the anti-Communist and advocate of Orthodox monarchy is political.
The patriotic thesis
The 'patriotic' reader is by no means enthralled by Communism. One might sooner say he has a utilitarian attitude towards it: it is simply the lesser evil. 'To shatter [the Communist regime] would be easy! But then what? If the Bolsheviks were toppled, Zionists and only Zionists would conic to power They have the money and the agents plus brilliant organization — we have nothing except the Bolshevik party which still protects us, albeit not very well. 14 On the other hand, the reader knows from August 1914 that under an Orthodox monarchy rhe Russians would prove defenceless against the Zionists — just as their fathers and grandfathers proved defenceless against the Jewish band of Rubinsteins, Vinavers and Simanoviches. Under the monarchy Jews not only took control of industry and the Russian press, but also plunged the empire into World War I — and so forced ;t to commit political suicide.
Thus, which of the following would be better as a form of political organization for Russia's future: an impotent Orthodox monarchy which would allow itself to be controlled by the Jews: or a Jewish bourgeois republic, under which Russia would literally become enslaved to the Zionists ('This was exactly the issue — whether or not Russia was to be made a colony of Israel'ls); or a Soviet regime, where the Bolshevik party would offer some protection against all these horrors? When the question is posed like this, the logic of the patriotic reader makes perfect sense. According to this logic. Solzhenitsyn's choice is the wrong one.
Like all national liberals, Solzhenitsyn has made a crude mistake in his advocacy of an 'Orthodox renaissance'. He had assumed, like the eighteenth-century French philosophers of the Enlightenment, that his sermon was falling onto a tabula rasa a virgin soil ready to accept any seed In fact, he was appealing to people who had been raised within the system of Soviet political education and who had deeply internalized the elementary truths of vulgarized Marxism. It was precisely in connection with the ideas of an Orthodox renaissance that these people, for the first time in their lives, felt the need independently to apply their 'political education' to analysing the country's future. They reached similar conclusions to those of Antonov a decade earlier
'Patriotic' truths were layered on top of the elementary principles of Soviet political education to form an ominously explosive mixture in which 'ownership of the means of production became bound up with the idea of 'Christian nationalism' and the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. Thus, according to one correspondent- 'The Soviet regime, which replaced the autocracy, has done the main thing — deprived the Zionists in our country of the right to private ownership of the instruments and means of production. Perhaps that phrase has set some people's teeth on edge, but were it not for this, the year 2000 would long ago have come for the children of Israel and all the problems of the Russian people would be lying at the bottom of ovens in Zionist crematoria '16 'Everything that in our system of political education is called capitalism, imperialism, exploitation, and oppression', another reader asserts, 'all refers to rich Jews.'17
The reductionists
It was a tragic episode in the history of the Russian Idea of the last century, when, in the 1880s, the Slavophiles finally succeedea in awakening the 'patriotic' consciousness of the masses. The dualism of 'world evil' that had served as the ideological foundation for liberal nationalism unexpectedly crumbled. Before, as we recall, Slavophilism had fought on two fronts: against native 'soul-destroying despotism' and against Western 'parliamentarism'. But as soon as the Russian Idea lefl the framework of intellectual struggle and was transformed, to use Marx's phrase, into a material force, the dualistic structure of world evil' proved inoperable, the equilibr im between its two 'devils' was disturbed Hatred of the evil of 'parliamentarism' was translated into attempts to recruit the other evil in the struggle agamst it, so that parl'amentarism now represented the only real threat to the existence of the world. In effect, what was taking place was a kind of 'reduction of world evii' in the Russian Idea's progression from an ideology confined to intellectual с rcles to one of mass appeal Evil became concentrated and personified in the Jews. The movement had become fascism.
We have witnessed the same thing happen to the contemporary Russian Idea. The intellectuals of national liberalism, who have continued to insist on the duality of world evil, are behind the times. To them, 'soul-destroying Communism' is stdl a 'devil'. So, like the Slavophiles before them, they are rejected by the 'patriotic masses', in whose consciousness the 'reduction of world evil' has already taken place.
The end of the second Christian millennium represents a date of epic significance for these masses; it is the time when the Jews will try to storm the last bastion of national independence on earth — Russia. They do not wish to become slaves of the Jews. 'It cannot be ruled out that tomorrow Russian blood will once aga.n be shed in sacrifice to Jehovah ... Do you want to be a slave, Solzhenitsyn? I don't! I'd rather die with a gun in my hands.'18
Such was the rift between the national-1. oeral teacners and the Orthodox patriotic' readers they had awakened. Gennadii Shimanov was to throw a bridge across that divide.
Notes
A'ov yi zhinuil, No. 118. 1975. p. 205.
Ibid., p 220. 1 Ibid., p 218.
KovtouiU, No. 20, 1974, p. 257.
Novyi zhumaL No. 118, 1975, p 22b. о Ibid", p 206.
Ibid, p 207.
Ibid, p 207 о Ibid., p. 207
Ibid, p 216.
Ibid. p. 207
Ibid.
Ibid., p. 215. U Ibid. p. 223 15 Ibid, p 210. \b Ibid., p. 227.
Ibid., p. 209.
Ibid. p. 218. 21 o.
18
1 he Politics of Russian Fascism
During my time 1 Moscow, I did not know Gennadii Shimanov personally. I only heard about him and his cohorts — the 'Shimanovites for 'Ultras', as they were called by my acquaintances from the Russian Club1 and the ed' orial board of Veche) — and read some of his works Shimanov appears to be one of a number of contemporary Russian intellectuals who have left behind all dreams of worldly success and deliberately descended to a level of meagre material existence in order to :."ind freedom at the 'bottom' — freedom to think, to wriie and to preach. He is an eievator operator. In this role — 'in the cellar, where it is damp, beside the garbage chute'2 — he is almost invulnerable to attack from the regime. This has afforded him the opportunity to s.'t and ponder and write dozens of articles, wh :h have been collected together in two samizaat books 3