In January of 1980, at the height of the panic and anticipation of disaster, one of my colleagues at Berkeley asked me whether the Afghan resistance to the Soviet invasion forces would last two or four weeks. I bet him a bottle of cognac that a year later, in January 1981, the resistance would still be con nuing, and in January of 1982 as well; that, in other words, the Soviet army would not only be bogged down in Afghanistan for some time to come, but also, w hout a radical change of regimes in Moscow, would be unable to make any move toward the Persian Gulf oil-fields. Needless to say, I won my cognac.
U.S. News and World Report, 18 February, 1985, p. 44.
Ibid., p. 47.
The methodology of this approach is complex and I certainly don't want to burden the reader with its theoret :al intr.ca. 'es. There s a table in the Appendix which lists all Russia's major reform attempts as well as all counter-reforms, and another which illustrates the structure of her historical cycles, i.e., periods separating one counter-reform from the other. Let me say only that this approach distinguishes between Russia's political system (which I call autocracy and which is centuries old), its subsystems (the Muscovite subsystem lasting from 1564 to 1700; the Petersburg one — from 1700 to February 1917; and the Soviet — from October 1917 until whenever), and its political regimes. The number of regimes in each cycle vaiies. In the most developed cycles, as can be seen from Figure 2 this number reaches six. But the three ma'n types of regimes — reform, counter-reform, and stagnat'on — are more or less clearly visible in each cycle. Each of these regimes has a different function and these functions, in turn, are quite independent of the intentions of their leaders. The function of a counter-reforn st regime is to perpetuate the system, that of a reformist one ? to disintegrate it, while a regime of stagnation aims to restore the system's equilibrium after it has been shaken by both extremes in turn. Thus, functionally speaking, each regime is antagonistic to its predecessor, i.e., bent on the destruction of its political legacy. This is clearly reflected in the priorities of each regime. While a regime, like Stalin's (counter-reform), distinctly prefers guns to butter, and a regime, like Khrushchev's (reform), just as distinctly prefers butter to guns, a regime, like Brezhnev's (political stagnation) tries to combine both. The de-Stalinization following Stalin, the de-Khrushchevization after Khrushchev, and the de-Brezhnevization after Brezhnev support this argument. If one looks further back into Russian political history, however, one would find a comparable 'de- Petrinization' or 'de-Katherinization' in the Petersburg subsystem as well as a 'de-Ivanization' in the Muscovite one. In other words, the major patterns of political change hold their own despite all the tremendous ideological and social upheavals of Russian history both before and after 1917.
M. Pogodin, Sochinenna, v. 4, pp. 7 10
Here are some of the pieces (those 1 know) m which The Russian New Right was discussed: 'The Left Right Stephen Cohen New York Times Magazine, 7/1/79; 'The Roots of Reaction', Leonard Schapiro, ' imes Literary Supplement, 10/11/78; The Russian New Right', Abraham Brumberg, the New Republic, 5/5/79; 'Russia's New Fascists', Peter Dreyer, Spectator, 9/9/78; 'The Russian New Right', John Campbell Fort igM Affairs, Fall 1978; 'L'Audience de Solzhenitsyn en Occident et щп USSR , Olga Carlisle, Le Monde Diplomatique, 2/9/78, 'La Nuova Destra Luciano Tas, Occidente, No. 6, 1978; 'The End of Marxism-Leninism: Anti-Semitism Institutionalized Reuben Ainzstein, New Statesman, 15/12/78; 'La Renaissance du Nationalisme Russe'. Abraham Brumberg, Le Maun, 14/2/79; 'Khomeini ante portas?' Helen von Sacnno, Siiddeutsche Zeuung, 3/3/79: 'The Russian New Right', S. Enders Wimbush The Russian Review, January 1980; 'Los Ultras Estan Conquistando El Poder En La USSR', Ignacio Carrion, ABC (Madrid), 21/3/80. L'orso russi guardera a destra L.ia Wainstam, La Stampa, 17/7/81; 'The Russian New Right' Victor Zaslavskv, Iheory and Society, v. 6, 1978: 'La cultura dell' isolazionismo in USSR Juliano Torlontano, La Voce Republicana, 4/9/81, 'Bulldoggarna slass under mattam Kremlin'. Disa Hastad. Dagen Nyheter, 9/6/82; 'Quando la Santa Russia inspira i dissidente' Rita di Leo, La Republica, 12/1/79; 'The Coalnion of Fear' Peter Dreyer, San Francisco Review of Buuks, vol. 4, No. 3, September 1978; 'Anli-Semitism, the New Soviet Religion', Reuben Ainzstein, Jerusulem Post, 28/12/78; 'The Russian New Right Jonathan Harris, American Political Science Review, vol. 73, 1979; 'The Linchpin is Anti-Semitism' Irving Louis Horowitz, Present Tense, Fall 1979; Russian New Right May Play Role', Ernest Conine, Herald Tribune, 1/9/82.
Quoted from Veche. No. 1, 1981, pp. 197, 196.
Lars-Erik Nelson 'Radio Liberty: Tax-Paid Anti-Semitism', Daily News,
January 1985.
'International Bloopers', Los Angeles Times, 28 January 1985
'Taking Radio Liberties', The New Republic, 4 February 1985
Dimitn Simes, The Destruction of Liberty', Christian Science Monitor 13 February 1985.
Ibid
The Historical Drama of the Russian Idea and - - America's Soviet debate
2
The Russian Idea: Between Two Hatreds
The Russian Idea, as I refer to the theoretical nucleus of the Russian New Right's ideology emerged at approximately the same time as Marxism, the theoretical nucleus of Bolshevik deology, in the years 1830 — 50. But it had no equivalent of Karl Marx. It was founded by a group of Moscow intellectuals, К Aksakov, A. Khomiakov, I. Kireevskii, Yu. Samarin, A. Koshelev, P. Kireevskii and others, whose opponents dubbed them Slavophiles (which, incidentally, they с d not object to being called). The philosophical, historiographical and religious aspects of Slavophilism were rather well studied in pre-revolutionary Russia and in the West. Unfortunately, the same cannot be said for its political doctrine (partly because the Slavophiles despised politics, relegating it to a minor place in their writings). Still less well studied are the complex metamorphoses which this doctrine underwent in the years 1860 — 80, and very little is known about its further transformation in the years 1 890-1910. Nothing at all'has been written on the connection of Slavophile political doctrine with the unexpected, unforeseen and wholly unexplained reappearance of the Russian Idea in Communist Russia during the 1960s.
Unlike Marxism, which has whole libraries devoted to it, the Russian Idea's political doctrine remains a relatively unilluminated subject even as far as its initial, Slavophile catechism is concerned. Its historical development from the 1830s to the 1980s has never been traced by anyone before. Perhaps this is why the addresses of its most famous contemporary spokesman, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, so shook America and Western Europe between 1975 and 1978. They seemed like a fresh wind from the East, something completely unheard of, the anguished cry of the Russian soul oppressed by Communism.
Hardly anyone suspected that Solzhenitsyn was merely repeating, often word for word, the 150-year-old postulates and formulas of the
Russian Idea. Significantly, Solzhenitsyn himself did not make any particular effort to direct the attention of his listeners and readers to the source of his inspiration. For some reason he did not wish to disclose his political genealogy to the world. Nor have any of his numerous biographers done this for him The origins of his views therefore remain mysterious, at least for the general reader, and probably not for him or her alone.