Alexander Piatigorsky
Basil Blackwell
9780631153344
22
g/8063U&i.344 ■■ -03 '97:29
Oxford and New York
IV Finally, if for all these reasons the Dissident Right really manages to develop in the direction of mutual accommodation and adaptation and. eventually merges with ts establishment sister, as happened in the last century, such an ideological evolution can be described n more or less strict terms.
For simplicity's sakeplet's assume that the Russian Idea evolves through three main phases: from a liberal nationalism that confronts the regime (L-Nationalism). to an isolationist nationalism that strives for co-operation with the nationalist faction within the establishment
(1) Rejection — along with 'Communist totalnaiian sm' — of the Western parliamentary model. Belief that a special and primary place belongs to Russia <n the sphere of the real liberation of humank nd
The definition of this 'real liberation as the transfer of freedom from the sphere of political guarantees against the arbitrary use of power, to that of the struggle of absolute good against absolute evil (so linking it not with the tradition of promoting cultural and institutional limitations on power, but rather with that of
[1] have been reproached of late for supposedly crossing over from the Slavophile camp into that of the Westernizers, entering into an alliance with liberals and the like. These personal reproofs only give me occasion to pose now the following question, one of a completely non-personal character: where is that Slavophile camp in which I could have and was supposed to remain today located? Who are its representai /es? What and where do they preach? Which scholarly, literary and poli.'cal periodicals are expressing and developing 'the great and fertile Slavophile idea'? It's enough to pose this question to see immediately that Slavophilism is at present a non-existent phenomenon . . . and that the Slavophile idea is not being represented nor developed by anyone, if we don't count as its development those views and Lendencies which we find in today's 'patriotic' press. Even with all the distinctions made between their various tendencies, from pro-serfdom to populism and from tooth-gnashing obscurantism to reckless mockery, the organs of this press adhere to one common principle — an elemental nationalism, lacking in moral substance, which they take for and pass off as true
[2] [Translator's note: The Russian term meshchanstvo, translated here as 'shopkeepers' (as in Napoleon's description of England as 'a Ration of shopkeepers'), is taken from the name of one of the estates into which the population of tsarist Russia was divided. As now used in the Soviet Union, it connotes a narrow, conventional, money-grubbing mentality — not unlike 'babbitry' in the American context.]
[3] 'A nation resettled into cities is doomed to extinction.'32 'All patriotism is inseparably linked to love for the land, for the sower and protector of the land, the peasant. All cosmopolitanism is equally inseparably linked to hatred of the peasantry — the creator and preserver of national traditions, the national morality and culture.' 'The peasant is the most morally unique type (M. Lobanov).'33 From this viewpoint, the hopelessly urbanized West is doomed, but for Russia, 'where everyone has, if not a peasant mother, then at least a peasant grandmothe: , all is not yet lost. In Russia, reverse migration, or the ex-urbanization of society is still possible.
[4] [Translator's note: The bigoted stereotype being reflected here sees the Germans of Lomonosov's time as the ones who nepotistically' dominated Russian scientific and cultural life. Today it is the Jews who are seen in this role.]
[5] [Translator's note: uzly. the plural of uzel, roughly meaning a 'cluster' or knot' of activity centred around a particular event. Solzhenitsyn's narration .n Red Wheel moves from one such cluster' of actions focused around a particular point of time to the next, quite discrete cluster'.]
[6] [Translator's note: The Muscovite Assembly of the Lard' a medieval Russian assembly called together by the tsar in the manner of a medieval parliament ]
[7] [Translator's note: The Belomor canal (The White Sea canal in the extreme arctic north of Russia.) was constructed by prisoners.]