But would Russia's regime of dictatorship be alleviated if .Ar.en.ca took as a guide instead of Pipes —Brrernski, 3:a-er s game r an o: 'managed rivalry'? Indeed, what is "managed rivalry" if no: a s.ightly civilized version of Brzezinski s game plan. tha. iS : r:e same re.ent.ess and irreconcilable superpower contest only with some rules to the game which both contestants are supposed to obey bjt which a Russian dictatorship might ignore anyway? Unfortunately, the author leaves us in the dark as to whether this strategy wT"-:"d he.p or hinder the Russian New Right's plan to topple the regime of reform anc introduce a regime of d'etatorsh p by the year 2CCC. Vt счпс Gorbachev s regime manage to survive this managed rivalry? Since the chances of this are slim, the Russian New Right would probably have little trouble in accepting Bialer's game plan — as long as it doesn't interfere with their own.
A fourth major American game plan was presented in 1983 in The Nuclear Delusion by George Kennan. At first glance it is altogether different from the Pipes— Brzezinski pfan as well as from Biaier's. It passionately protests the nuclear arms race. It repudiates any superpower military rivalry projected into infinity, 'accelerated' or otherwise. It is not beyond comparing the major Soviet policies with those of the Petersburg empire or even Muscovite tsardom. It escapes the traps of the 'evil empire' and permanent geopolitical confrontation. Yet its political conclusions are rather un ispiring. They may be descr jed as non-;nvolvement — both in Soviet domestic affairs and in the arms race. They can actually be reduced to a common-sense formula: live and let 1 ve. But would this save Gorbachev's reform from the fate its predecessors met? Would it help to arrest a new brutal counter-reform? Unfortunately, Kennan's game plan does not address these questions.
As one of that rare and precious breed of sov :toloj/St and historian, Kennan undoubtedly knows that Russia is no stranger to counter- reform: that its political past is permeated with historical calamities. Lenin's 'revolution from below' which followed from the 'systemic' crisis precip.iated by the fpilure of Stolypin's reforms, was no less catastrophic for Russia than the 'revolut 5ns from above' of Ivan the Terrible, Peter I, or Joseph Stalin Each was unfai. ngly accompanied by mass terror and all the other horrors of garrson-state despotism, costing the nation millions of innocent lives. These historical disasters also deformed Russia's political culture, blocking her exit from the Middle Ages. They were the cause of the terrible fact that — alone among European nations — Russia has never managed to free itself of its empire, or separate church from state, or base its institutions on the principle of the separation of powers (the basis of every modern state).
Kennan, who knows a lot about Russian history, unhKe the average sovietologist, might have found it rewarc ng to ask some search ig questions. For example, can Russia, imprisoned for centuries .n a vicious circle of bold reformist attempts and fierce counter-reforms, free herself without outside help? Doesn't her entire past look rather as a list of desperate efforts to struggle free from an historical trap, while each of them merely pulls the snare tignter? Isn't Russi in history, from this standpoint, just a medical record of the Sick Man of Europe?
For centuries the rest of the world remained aloof ol Russia's predicament. This is what Kennan's book, in lull accordance with time-honoured tradition, recommends once more. Yet, as its very title - The Nuclear Delusion — suggests, we are living 11 a rather different age today. What if a new counter-reform should befall Russia in this nuclear era? Might it not, this time, spell disaster for the rest of the world too? Preventing such a scenario would seem to be the central problem of world politics till the end of this century. Unfortunately Kennan's game plan, though more deserving of sympathy than the others discussed here, does not address this problem.
There is. of course, no sovietologieal game plan that addresses the strategy- of the Russian New Right for the year 2000. In Pipes, Brzezinski, Bialer, and Kennan, we have, as far as 1 know, presented all the colours of the Western sovietologieal rainbow as far as grand strategies for the rest of this century are concerned. Such is the price sovietology pays for its flight from history.
The terms in which we argue
The fact thai the Russian New Right is not discussed in America s Soviet debate is only part of the problem What is worse, is that we don't even have the terms in which to discuss it. The necessary instruments of analysis are lacking in our discourse. We know how indiscriminately Seweryn Bialer uses the term 'Soviet regime but he is by no means exceptional. This alone denies us the possibility of probing beneath the surface of the Soviet political process to grasp its inherently antagonistic nature. We haven i yet grasped the fact on which the preachers of the Russian Idea build all then hopes: that the Russian autocracy is in reality a kind of a Tneta-regiine' where every new element (new regime) is the anrithesis ol its predecessor — its negation, not its continuation, as sovietology presumes. Antonov, as we know, condemned the de-Stalhiization of the system under Khrushchev. Others welcomed its de-Khi ushchevization under Brezhnev. If they are now worried about its de-Brezhnevization under GorDachev, it is because their preference was for re-Sta.inization. Thus the notion of 'regime-change' in the Soviet Russian political system is central to all their calculations. Indeed, <t seems to be a key notion for any analysis of the Soviet political process. Yet, sovietology doesn t even suspect its existence.
For us, the single term 'Soviet regime' is good enough to describe
War Communism (a garrison-state), NEP (liberalization of the 1920s), Stalin's dictatorship, Khrushchev's reform, Brezhnev's decay, and Gorbachev's desperate attempt at transition to new reform. Even the methodology of the Russian New Right is much more sophisticated than this. Wh.le we could calculate perfectly the number and throw- weight of Soviet missiles, and figure out who were the 'hawks' and the loves' in the Politburo, we were unable to predict either the phenomenon of de-Stalinization after Stalin, de-Kbrushchevization after Khrushchev, or de-Brezhnevization after Brezhnev. We are not only unable to exploit the USSR s innate antagonisms, we cannot even discern their existence. For years we treated the regime of de-Stalinization as Stalinism without Stalin. We repeated the mistake by treating the reg me of de-Khrushchevization as Khrushchevism without Khrushchev and we are still treating a regime of de-Brezhnevization as Brezhnevism without Brezhnev. Just like the generals of the old adage who are always preparing to fight the last war, so sovietologists are always ready to deal with the last Soviet regime. In our analysis of the Soviet system, we are always one regime behind. As another example of how far we are behind in our methodological ammunition, compared with the Russian New R ght, let's take the notion of 'Soviet ideology', a term we use ust as ind;scr minately as 'Soviet regime'. For the ideolog ;t of the Russian Idea, there is no such thing as a 'Soviet ideology', as the reader must have noticed many times throughout this book The Young Guards' rebellion against the deology of 'satiety' and 'education' : a prime example. Antonov and Emel'ianov, respective representatives of the vozrozhdentsy and 'National Bolshevism,' to use Dunlop's language, were calling for a radical ideological transformation within the confines of 'Soviet ideology' The Nation Speaks made the 'ideological re-or ;ntation' of the Soviet state a linchpin of its game plan. Shimanov's entire strategy is centred around the call for a metamorphosis in 'Soviet ideology'. In the final analysis, this is all that the Russian New Right n the 1980s about (if we exclude the increasingly insignificant ant' Communist sectarians of an 'immobile Aksakov cast').