The Ideology of Russian Fascism
In Shimanov, the Russian New Right has, for the first time, found not only an ideologist who can address the awakened 'Orthodox patriotic masses' in their own language, but also someone who is a potential political leader, capable of transforming a sectarian anti-Communist doctrine into a real mass political movement. Isn't this just what the patriotic' readers of Veche and Solzhenitsyn were clamouring for? But whereas they could offer only resettlement in Siberia or an Orthodox monarchy 111 mothballs, Shimanov offers the 'patriots' the possibility of a real struggle: gradually and legally to transfigure the Soviet state, to remobilize it and transform it into a vital and powerful weapon for repelling the 'Zionist imperialist' global assault scheduled for the year 2000.
Compared with Shimanov, Osipov and Solzhenitsyn really are generals without armies. Shimanov can speak to 'the leaders' on behalf of a political constituency. He is not posturing before the patriotic masses or lecturing them. He is an ordinary man, an elevator operator and a patriot, a true man of the people. He does not bother to appeal to the leaders' Russian souls.' He appeals directly to their interests, instead
In the eyes of the 'patriotic' reader, both Solzhenitsvn and Osipov were compromised by their support from the 'Zionist' West They were interviewed by Zionist journalists, published by Zionist publishers, and discussed on Zionist radio stations. Shimanov is clean n this respect, and has had no such dealings with the hated West. He represents a sector of Soviet public opinion whose strength ihe leaders can easily verify by the most elementary sociological survey (the KGB has a number of highly experienced sociologists at its disposal).
Of course, Veche was the first to discover this source of political capital, but it was Shimanov who discovered how to make use of it. He was the first to lay claim to the role of intermediary between 'the leaders and the 'Orthodox patriotic masses', fn the present climate of reform, and with the arrival of Gorbachev and a new generation of Soviet leaders, the phenomenon of Gennadii Shimanov might seem insignificant However, looking back over the past 500 years of Russian history, and looking forward to the year 2000 from the perspective of
Shimanov and his 'patriotic' masses, we get a rather different impression. For, in reality, Shimanov — and at present he alone — promises to heal the empire's most vulnerable and sorest point: its rapidly growing inferiority complex.
In fact, in the eyes of the world, the Russian empire is ceasing to be a realistic alternative to its principal age-old rival, the West. It is skidding again — as it did at the end of the seventeenth and the nineteenth centuries. Its leology is increasingly being seen as a scandalized Utopia. Even the Communist Parties of Italy, in the West, China, in the East, Hungary in the Warsaw Pact itself, have been jettisoning everything Russian from their Communist practice and doctr: ne. They arc turning to the concept of a mixed economy, with a state and private sector, borrowed from the West, or to pluralistic — liberal Marxist — ideology. Of course, Russia too could choose to succumb to the reformist impulse, right behind the Hungarians, the Chinese and the Italians. But then she would cease being a leader. She would be reduced to the status of follower, ol imitator, and thus no longer mm .]ue. She would be trading her spiritual birthright for the mess of pottage offered by Western material prosperity. For adherents of the Russian Idea and for the Orthodox patriotic masses, such a course would signify a national humiliation of awesome proportions — comparable to Russia's ideological and political capitulation to the 'Americanization of the spirit', in the language of Young Guardism, or to 'the Jewish drive for world dominion', according to the readers of Veche.
Is there any chance for Russia to regain her spiritual birthright? Is there a realistic alternative to the Soviet system's humiliating demobilization and surrender to the West? If so, then Shimanov's alternative is the only one on offer. His 'new Russian ascetic and spiritual civilization', has no use for 'markets' or material prosperity and thus doesn't need to mimic the Chinese or the Hungarians. This is why Shimanov is important, but his significance has been largely overlooked by Western sovietology. (I shall return to this subject in my concluding chapter.)
At first glance, Shimanov's historical and political concept appears to contain little that ts original. He borrowed theocracy from the VSKhSON programme, imperial isolationism from Veche, and the 'combination of Nil Sorskii with Lenin' from Antonov. From Solzhenitsyn he lifted hatred of the 'smatterers' and a devastating critique of democracy, while directly from the Orthodox patriotic masses he took their rabid anti-sen: .tism. However, the principal novelty of his concept is that he has unrelentingly discarded all the
Utopian and sectarian elements of national liberalism He drained VSKhSON's theocracy of its adventuristic conspiratorial flavour, separated out the 'Siberian gambit' from Vcche's isolationism, and the retrospective Utopia from Solzhenitsyn. and severed From Under the Rubble of its mystical anti-Communism. Most 'mportantly, he contributed something to the Russian Idea which its political constituency had been passionately seeking — the aflirmation of an 'atmosphere of allegiance' to the Soviet state as the 'only possible one for Orthodox Russian patriots.'
That is how the politics of Russian nationalism looked after its shell of bombastic rhetoric had broken and had fallen away. Instead of Orthodox monarchy's double-headed eagle, hatched by the Russian Idea at the turn of the century, this time there emerged a hideous twisted reptile — Russian fascism.
Summary ot the Ultras'
The concept of the Russians as a chosen people, saved by God only thanks to the exceedingly cruel trials he has imposed upon them over the course of theii history. These very tests can be viewed as testimony to Russia's select status.
The concept of the religious nature of Communism, within which the very scope of its activity in орроъкюп to God is transformed into evidence of its having been chosen as Ms vehicle.
(.3) The concept of the Soviet state as an unconscious tool of the Lord, destined to save Russia and in the final analysis (through Orthodoxization'), the world too. Recognition of the principle thai the Soviet system is potentially 'Russian in spirit4? ihus bringing Shimanov closer to Young Guardism and creating an objective basis for the ideological merger of the establishment and the dissident branches of the Right.
The concept of a 'state catastrophe' threatening Russia if the Soviet leaders and 'patriotic' masses do not manage to find a common language and begin to work together.
The development of political devices for uniting 'Russian Orthodoxy with Leninism' and exploiting and re-interpreting the slogans of Soviet propaganda.
(.6) The replacement of muted anti-semitism (VSKhSON and Veche) or symbolic anti-semitism (Solzhenitsyn) by overt anti-semitism linked to the exposure of 'Kike-Freemasonry' (identified with the
liberal dissident movement) as an agent for the forces of global chaos.
The attempt to introduce the image of the 'year 2000' — the appointed time for the final confrontation between Russia and the West — into political dialogue w ,h the Soy et regime.
The concept of Russian fascism as an alternative strategy for Russia as it stands on the threshold of that year 2000.
Notes
Officially the 'Russian Club' was called 'The Society for the Preservation of the Monuments of Antiquity' and was an entirely legal affair. In reality, however, this was a 'party' institution where Russian Idea dissidents regularly gathered with their establishment comrades .n order to exchange views and develop strategies. Pass i ans came to a boh -n the Russian Club in the 1960s resulting in the formation of the Russophile factions.