For the national liberals, the West - though hopeless and otten - is their sole ally, who, however weakly, still defends them from the Communists. In other words, the national liberals need the West the same way that 'patriotic' readers need Communism. For Shimanov, ihe West is a plague, the source of 'pagan-bourgeois infection which must be wiped out if humanity is to survive Of course, to Shimanov, like Solzhenitsyn, the hateful 'smatterers' are Jewish or Judaizing intellectuals — 'civilized savages', as he calls them. He hates them for the same reasons the Young Guards did — because they 'feed on the refuse of Western civilization ' Not surprisingly, Andrei Sakharov's programme is 'Kike-Freemason' to Shimanov. Nor does he have any sympathy for the national liberals, who, in his opmion. dress up like patriots while echoing the 'Kike-Freemasons He ridicules them mercilessly.
'From a reading of his |Solzhenitsyn's] Letter w the Soviet Leaders, says Shimanov, 'it may appear that Solzhenitsyn has already outgrown democracy and passed over from it to autocracy (that is Russian style monarchy)/ but, he adds wryly, 'this is true only if one reads inattentively. He has actually taken this step just with one foot, while the other remains . . . where it was "17 Shimanov s critique of Solzhenitsyn 'from the Right' is very important for us. because it leads straight to the core of his political concept. To Solzhenitsyn's call on the leaders to abandon the state ideology. Shimanov says nonsense', because 'for an ideocratic state to abandon its ''deology means simply to commit suicide . I The Marxist ideology ... is the foundation of our state . . [And] it is necessary to see to it, not that Marxism is mechanically discarded, but that it is transformed by life itself and . . transcended 18
'Comicai and miseraole democratic void'
Thus in the ideologv for Russia's future charted by Shimanov, he not only plans to use the religious elements n Marxism, which is to become an organic 'union of Nil Sorskii with Lenin' (a mixture of Russian Orthodoxy with Leninism), but also he believes that this future state must remain ideocranc — that is, having a single, monopolistic ideology that excludes any differences in thinking.19 Shimanov, like his pre-revolutionary counterpart Sergei Sharapov, believes in dissidence only so long as he is not in power. This is why he viciously attacks Solzhenitsyn's early speculation as to the 'free flowering' of ideas in a future Russia. He will not tolerate any such freedom; it is not needed by anyone in Russia apart from the small band of Judaizing cosmopolitans: 'It is time to abandon the ridiculous prejudice that a lukewarm atmosphere of "freedom of thought" and "freedom of creat vity" is the best one for the maturation of truth and great art.'20 - "
Note the paradox of Shimanov's doctrine. Here is a dissident, a freethinker, who openly preaches the totalitarian suppression of heterodoxy and hates the very principle of dissidence. When we try to analyse the basis of this paradox, however, we see that it is only the log'cal consequence of Shimanov's concept of the state. 'In Russia,' says Shimanov, 'there has been too much suffering and God will not permit it to be resolved in the conical and miserable democratic void. There must be no Western democracy for us.'21 Earlier, Leont'ev had put the case more precisely when he declared that, 'The Russian nat'on has expressly not been created for freedom.'22
But why must there be no democracy? By answering this question we can explain all of Shimanov, even h ; justification of political informing which he shamefacedly tries to support with a long quotacion from Dostoevskii;23 and even his appeals to 'create an amb'ence of allegiance' to the state 'as the only one possible for Orthodox Russian patriots.'24
Shimanov asks, 'Can we really, with valid authority, label as democratic, regimes which have emancipated themselves from solving moral problems in favour of purely fiscal and police functions?'25 To Shimanov, a state can only exist in the full sense if it assumes responsibility for the moral tasks of society, >t defines the nation's goals and leads the nation towards them. This is because the state must be a 'tool for the transformation of the world', for a new crusade. It must therefore have total control over its subjects, in a way that democracy cannot
How do the Western democrats relate to the regime? Why, whoever wants to, approaches it . . . and begins to shake its breast . . . arguing his rights . . . until the poor regime no longer knows whom it is supposed to serve and to whom it should be subjcct ... is demoralized . . . and in effect abandons power . . . instead of firmly defining what must be and what must not.2b
In other words, a state which is not absolute not autocratic, and does not possess 'a high'v developed nervous system in the form of a Party which embraces the entire organism of socictv almost down to its smallest cell'.27 is not a state at all according to Sh'manov Democracy is bad because it is not totalitarian in principle- and thus cannot exercise such a degree of control.' Converselv the Soviet system is good because it contains the potential for totalitarianism and thus is able to provide such control 2S This is the price Shmianov says the people must pay for their chosen status: the\ must be aware that :t is their fate, their cross and their secret that thev shall be the slave of a totalitarian state.
Mot even the most fanatical foreign Russophobe has ever ventured to pronounce so definitive a death sentence upon Russia. Onlv a person who kneels reverently before the church altar out of love for the Russian people can permit himself to proclaim so openly that his people — the onl\ vessel of the 'true faith' in the world, destined to be the moral teacher of mankind — are in fact slaves. Moreover, what Shimanov's people have to teach mankind is the fine art of slavery
Thus we have Shimanov's F-nationalist Utopia, based on profound distrust of the individual, who — though supposedly created in God s own image — is deprived of the most elementary right of free choice and condemned to be mereh a tool in the hands of an all-powerful and all-benevolent state. The state takes the place of God in this totartarian paradise — and legit .mately so because it is the sole embodiment of the pagan image of the nation, which in the minds of Shimanov and his 'Ultras', has replaced God. For. according to Shimanov. Russia is an object of faith. 2Q
Russia. Nation or Empire?
We turn now to the main paradox of Shimanov's concept On the one hand he asserts that nations must not 'have communion with foreigners when there is 110 need', and 'national organisms must be self-contained and impenetrable to each other,'30 while on the other hand he attacks Solzhenitsyn's early proposal (which would seem to follow logically from this premise) that the Soviet peoples should be permitted to secede from the USSR How are we to reconcile isolationism with imperialism? Unlike Danilevskii. Shimanov calls on the help of Providence, for which of course, there are no paradoxes.
The Soviet Union is not a mechanical conglomeration of nations of