G. M. Shimanov, Ideal'noe gosudarstvo [The Ideal State] (Keston College Archives), p. 2.
Pis'ma a Rossii and Protiv techeniia.
Moskovskii sbornik, No. 1 (Keston College Archives), p. 68. Emphasis added.
' [OurJ line is "further i lght" than that of the "revolutionary underground", but "further left" than that timid position of universal admissaoility on which you stand ... I think that super-obedience, just ike rebellion, will not bring Russia anything good' (Vol'noe slovo, No. 17 — 18 p. 19).
The works of Konstantin Leont'ev suffered approximately the same fate a century before. His first work, later famous, Vizantizm slavianstvo [Byzantinism and the Slavic World], was rejected by all the organs of the nationalist press and published in an obscure journal — Chtenia v Imperatorskom obshchtstve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh [Proceedings of the Imperial Society of Russian History and Antiquities] — in 187P, where it remained unnoticed until 1885, when the first volume of his collection Vostok, Rossia i slavianstvo [The East, Russia, and the Slavic World] appeared, causing a sensation. This seems to indicate that an ideology's timeliness is not a simple matter of who lived or wrote after whom. In the nineteenth century such antagonists as Ivan Aksakov, Danilevskii, Leont'ev, and Sharapov were also contempora es. A \ lole brew of nationalist conceptions can boil at the same time in the cauldron of right-wing ideas. What matters is the sequence with which — because of changes in historical circumstances — certain doctrines which had until recently shone on the ideological scene, fade into the background, while others, which had previously been in shadow, move into the light.
Shimanov, Как ponimat' nashu is.toriu [How to Understand Our History ], p. 5.
'The Russian nation is increasingly vanishing in a spiritual and physical sense. . . . The soul of the Russian person is degenerating too: in the current spiritual and intellectual emptiness, as if deprived of air, it is fading and wilting. Morality is drying up . . . The most complete disorientation in life . . . the decay of the tamily, spiritual disorganization, drunkenness perversion feeling trapped' (Protiv techeniia, [Against the mainstream ] p. 62).
Ibid
Ibid, p. 18.
Shimanov, Как ponimat' nashy isturiu, p, 5.
Ibid , p. 6. Capitalized n the original.
Here Shimanov, of course, is also taking his cue from Berdiaev However unlike VSKhSON, he is not using The New Middle Ages as his guide, but Istoki i smysT russkogo kommuniztna [The Sources and Sense of Russian Communism], YMCA Press. Paris- 1955. This book was unanimously condemned by nationalists of every shade for its heretical assertion that communism has Russian roots.
Shimanov, Protiv techevnu, p 23.
Vestnik RKhD No. 127, 1979, p. 295.
lb Shimanov, Protiv techeniia, p 90.
Shimanov, Как ponimat' nashy istoriu, p. 8.
Ibid., p. 9.
If we assume for a moment that in a situation ol serious crisis, brought on, say, by the collapse of Gorbachev's reforms, power in Russia came into the hands of the military, they would clearly have an easier time coming to terms with Shimanov than with Solzhenitsyn.
Shimanov, Как ponimat' nashy isturiu, p 8.
Shimanov, Protiv techeniia, p 24.
Russkoe oOozreme No. 1, 1895, p. 264.
Sb manov, Protiv techeniia pp. 97 — 8.
Ibid., p. 101.
Shimanov, Ideal'noe gosudarstvo, p. 6. Emphasis added.
Moskovsku sbornik, p. 26. Emphasis added.
Shimanov, Ideal'noe gosudarstvoi p. 14.
Here again it is difficult not to notice how extraordinarily convenient Shimanov's doctrines are for ideologically justifying the regeneration of the mechanism of totalitarian rule — in other words, for a new counter- reform
Shimanov, Protiv techeniia p. 20.
Shimanov, Ideal'noe gosudarstvo, p. 6.
Ibid., p 16.
Shimanov, Protiv techeniia. p
Ibid , pp. 76-83.
In a private Moscow conversation in 1976, Shimanov also spoke of peaceful coexistence' as a source for improving the Soviet economy, putting an end to the universal embezzlement of socialist property, and drunkenness, as well as increasing the productivity of labour.
Ill
Conclusion
19
Fascism takes to the Streets
In the last century, history was pulled by oxen. It took two generations for the Russian Idea to be transformed from a protest against despotism into an apology for it. Only by its third generation did it prove ready to embrace fascism. Of course, even by the 1870s, an astute observer could have foretold, with some degree of certainty, that an leological doctr ne that preached a spiritual return to the middle ages, would, very likely, toward the end of the century, also return there politically: to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and, that, by the start of the next century, it would take to the streets in an effort to reverse the wheel of L.story by brute force. Before such an observer's eyes a kind of historical experiment would have been unfolding, and the confirmation of his hypothesis would have promised an outstanding academic result.
No such observers, however, existed in the 1870s. The very concept of historical experiment as a strategy for poclass="underline" ical research was only to be born a century later n the West.1 As for native liberal critics of the Russian Idea, they — for all their diatribes aga.nst its 'teeth-gnashing obscurantism' — d d not take it seriously as a poll- cal alternative (recall V. Solov'ev's tirade about its 'reckless bantering'). All we can say now, looking at the metamorphosis of the Russian Idea in retrospect, is that it came on to the streets in 1905, as a result of what I call a 'regime' crisis within the Russian political system. But for it to be capable of adopting H .tier's swastika as its official emblem, and total war against the 'kike-Freemasons' as its official ideology, the 'system c' crisis of 1917 was needed.2
We have already several times remarked on the repetition of this metamorphosis begun in the second half of this century. The main difference is that this time it has happened astonishingly qu ckly. In Petersburg Russia it took eighty years for the Russian Idea to come as far as it has today over the course of just one Sovi :t generat m: from a dedicated struggle against 'soul-destroying Communism' in the inid- I9t>0s to being prepared, in the early 1980s, to take to the streets wearing the swastika.
This is how an anonymous sami/.dat author described this phenomenon in August 1983:
Lately, on the streets, squares and parks of many Soviet c'.ies, particularly at night, you will increasingly meet groups of young people whose clothes, speech and behaviour are uncannily reminiscent of the sadlv familiar patterns of Germany in the 1920s, [including] semi- home-made swastika charm bracelets. Last year Moscow already witnessed an attempt to stage a fascist demonstration by Pushkin's monument, on the 20th April — Adolf Hitler's birthday. This year, several days before that date, the principals and party secretaries of secondary schools met for special briefings on what to do in the event of the public appearance 'of pro-fascist elements within a number of groups of youths ignorant of their social obligations' . . . And .ndeed, on the 20th April, public appearances by fascist youths were recorded .n a string of cities. These appearances varied in form: n different cities ana districts, the fascists marched in formation in the streets and courtyards, chanting 'Heil Hitler!' and 'Sieg Heil!'; in olhers. clothed in their uniforms with [swastika] armbands, they moved into coffee bars and discos to declaim their slogans; in still others, there were demonstrations at night, In many cases the fascists started brawls, sometimes they beat up war veterans wearing their service ribbons. They used not just fists, but also knuckle dusters. Those who were involved, were mainly students, young workers, and older pupils from academic and technical secondary schools.3