Выбрать главу

These same questions, however, could have been asked about the Bolsheviks at the bej/nning of the twentieth century. Then, as now, such statistical reasoning is irrelevant to the matter at hand. How many supporters d: I the Bolshev js have, say, a decade before their shattering v.ctory in 1917? Very few — far fewer than the Russian New Light has today. Moreover, the Bolshev ts had no one in influential court circles. Yet they won. Why?

Statistics cannot answer this question. In 1908, the prediction of a Bolshev к victory would have been unthnkable using statistical methods. However, from the point of view of the hypothesis that l;es at the core of this book, the Bolsheviks' victory is easily explained: they were the single group in Russia at the t me possessing a genu le alternative ideology capable of saving the empire from collapse at the moment of its 'systemic' cnsis. The fact that such an alternative ideoiog5' emerged within the mediaeval empire as it stood on the threshold of a 'systemic crisis is at least as ;important as any statistical calculations. In a pre-modern system, the role of 'deology differs significantly from its role in a modern secularized state — if only because the nature of such a system is essentially rehgious, however scientifically it chooses to explain itself to the world To speak about a religious system solely in terms of statistical arguments is, at the very least, na've.

We have seen how Russian autocracy moves out of its crises by means of 'regime changes', accompanicd by the r religious-cultural equivalents, 'denomination changes' It was exactly this kind of denomination change' that the Bolsheviks were preparing for the empire at the beginning of the twentieth century to enable it to survive its 'systemic' crisis. It is also this kind of 'denomination chang< that today's Russian Idea is preparing foi the empire as the current millennium draws to a close. This is where ts real danger lies, not in the number of its adherents in the Soviet Union or patrons in the Kremlin.

I understand how much more attractive Pipess recommendation simply to pressure the empire until it begins to burst at the seams, or Brzezinski's call for unrelenting geopolitical confrontation, sound to conventional politicians. They don't want to have to bother with anything tricky like 'regime changes' or denomination changes'. The traditional approaches are Si.nple and familiar. In essence, Pipes and Brzezinski are calling 011 American policy to put the same pressure on the Soviet empire as World War I put 011 the tsarist empire. The simpler a recommendation, the more seductive it is Aren t the empire's resources limited0 Won't its rulers face a choice between guns and butter as a result of Western pressure? Driven to the wall, they will at some point be forced to decide whether to build new rockets and completely depuve the population of meat, thus running the risk of provok. rg riots and undermining then own legitimacy At some point, Pipes calculates, they will have to choose meat, unless they want to commit political suicide. Thus the problem will be solved. If we can't win a nuclear war, what remains is to win the nuclear peace. It is so natural. The main ttiing is to win.

There is only one thing wrong with this reasoning, the pressure of World War I did not give rise to reform in tsarist Russia, but to a garrison-state and Communism — i.e., to that very 'regime change" and 'denomination change' that Pipes is now fighting. Pipes's recommendation doesn't take nto account that ideology is also a resource for a mediaeval system, and, indeed, its most powerful resource.

Suppose that, under a post-dictatorial ideology, the empire's rulers, in order to provide the population with meat, are required to produce 250 million tons of grain a year or make massive grain purchases from the Umted States. Under the alternative dictatorial ideology- with its spiritual and ascetic values' which the Russian Idea would offer in the event of a 'systemic' crisis, the empire would not need to produce even 100 million tons of grain, or buy from abroad, because this deology doesn't require the populace to be fed meat at all, because it is in principle vegetarian. In 1953, forty years after the Bolshevik counter-reform, the production of meat 111 Russia had not even attained the level it was at in 1913. The imperative of national survival successfully replaced meat — for a quarter of a century. Dictatorial ideology turned asceticism into a patriotic virtue and consumption into a national sin. No spontaneous riots were recorded. The dictatorial regime's legitimacy was not subjected to doubt until after the death of the dictator.

I11 other words, the rulers of the mediaeval empire will never end up faced with the fataf choice becween rockets and meat postulated by Pipes. Their real choice at the point of a 'systemic' crisis will be something completely d'tferent: between a post-dictatorial denomin­ation, which forced them to triple meat production after the dictator's death, and ts opposite, a vegetarian ideology of dictatorship, which would allow them to concentrate all the system's resources on rocket production. Thus nuclear peace is as unwinnaole as nuclear war, and che logic of P pes and Brzezinski collapses

Orthodox marxism has been exhausted as an ideological resource for the system, just as the ideology of tsarism was exhausted at the beginning of the twentieth century. Alternative ideological resources are needed to enable the empire to survive a 'systemic' crisis. The Russian Idea is offering these resources for the 'Year 2000' just as the Bolsheviks offered theirs in 1917. That's where Bolshevism's true strength lay, and that's where the Russian Idea's true strength lies tooav. If sovietology fa'Is to comprehend the function of ideolog} in a pre-modern system and follows the log:c of Pipes or Brzezinski, the 'Year 2000' will catch the West napp1 ng, just as it was caught by the events of 1917. Must we forever be condemned to understand such things only in hindsight? This -ime h'ndsight mignt be too late — for all of us.

Notes

Martin F. Herz, ed Decline of the 'West?, Ethics and Public Policy Center, Georgetown University, 1978. p. 62.

The ultimate irony of this fundamental sovietological postulate is that it looks rather like a carbon copy of a corresponding Soviet dogma, according to which the October Revolution has produced an unprecedented political body that, except for geography and a common heritage in the fine arts, has nothing to do with its sombre imper il past.

I included several chapters about this unfortunate phenomenon in my book The Origins of Autocracy, an outline of which the reader will fine n my essay 'Flight from Theory', Slavic Review, Fall 1983.

Alexander Yanov, The Drama of the Soviet 1960s: A Lost Reform, 'Notes on Terminology. Soviet Protestantism', pp. 127 — 30.

See Yanov, Detente after Brezhnev, pp. 37 — 8.

Survival Is Not Enough.

Timothy J Colton, The Dilemma of Reform in the Soviet Union, CouncJ on Foreign Relations, 1984, pp. 78 — 9.

Afterword

The book was already set up when the word from Moscow came. Andrei D. Sakharov is tree from his internal exile. Did it last foi seven years• To thousands of Russians it seemed to last for ages. Sakharov's re-emergence in Moscow has been a miracle for them. Apart :rom being the highest authority on things Russian, Sakharov is the conscience of the nation. For lack of comparison it is rather hard to explain to outsiders. For this we have to strain our hi agination a bit What would contemporary Americans feel if, say, Thomas Jefferson re-emerged among them, alive and well? Wouldn't they await with trepidation his judgement on whatever they do or say or write 1 So was I awaiting with trepidation Sakharov's judgement on the central issue of this book — should the West ally with Solzhenitsyn and his followers and thus ruin Gorbachev's reforms, or should it ally with reformers and support their desperate endeavour