The Sluggish Versus the Frightening

A threat for the day after tomorrow

Lev Lourie

Not so long ago it still seemed that the fascist threat in Russia was a myth, a convenient bogeyman for the authorities, created in order to attract the intelligentsia: Barkashov’s [Alexander Barkashov, leader of Moscow ultra-rightist organization Russian National Unity] guardsmen made them more tolerant toward the Burbulises [Gennady Burbulis, a prominent member of Yeltsin’s reform team during the early `90s] of this world.

Actually, all the extreme nationalist organizations in Russia, from Pamyat to Russian National Unity, are pygmean. [Pamyat, the first openly nationalist organization to arise during perestroika, is more intellectually and culturally oriented than the militaristic RNE.] They failed miserably in regional and State Duma elections. The more noise the press made about the rightists, the more Jews emigrated. The Jews resembled the shagreen leather in Balzac’s story: they disappeared before the nationalists’ very eyes. The relative success of Zhirinovsky’s Liberal Democratic Party showed the profound indifference, even amongst the right-wing electorate, to the idea of racial purity. The opposition to the regime grouped around the Communists, a party more traditionalist than extremist.

The "Weimar Russia" model proposed by Alexander Yanov [a well-known political scientist who lived in the West for many years] doesn’t work. Despite all the woes of the transitional period, gradual stabilization is evident. The most active segment of the population has been absorbed by the opportunities for self-realization that have arisen in the new economy.

Fascism, nevertheless, is alive and well in Russia and in Petersburg. It doesn’t represent an immediate danger, but it has the potential: given the chance, the storm troopers could emerge from their bunkers.

WHERE DOES THE POWER OF RUSSIAN NAZISM LIE?

There is no point in recounting the Frankfurt School’s ideas on the roots of Nazi ideology and the reasons for its popularity. Suffice it to say that the Nazis give a whole picture of the world to their disciples, a feeling of belonging, an image of the enemy. They rescue them from neglect and the aimlessness of existence, from unwanted freedom.

Nazis are myth-makers. Their myth is not based on the laws of revelation: it is quasi-rationalistic and founded on what is supposedly a generally known fact. They are not the mystics, but the bastards of the Enlightenment. President Yeltsin is not the Antichrist, but a small-town Jew, Eltsin. The Russian White House was stormed in 1993 by guerrillas from the Zionist secret service Beitar. Achilles, as everyone knows, was a Slav. Marshal Zhukov [Soviet WWII military leader and Russian national hero] belonged to a secret order of Eurasians. The world is ruled by the Elders of Zion. There was no Tatar-Mongol yoke.

The irrational rationalism of Russian Nazis emanates from the peculiar features of Russian folklore tradition. The deep and justified distrust Russians have of official information has given rise to the desire to detect a hidden meaning in all political events. A special system of folk-historical superstitions is created. The true czar has special czarist marks on his body. German doctors infect the Russian people with cholera in order to exterminate them. The placement of o’s in the manifesto on the emancipation of the serfs is not random: it is a secret message from the czar. He warns: the manifesto is a deception. The design on the flyleaf of a school notebook is a coded alert to the Jews about the coming explosion in Chernobyl.

The Nazis concentrate on working with young people. The far-right activist is an engineer, an "Afghaner" [a veteran of the war in Afghanistan], a policeman, a worker. He gives free lessons in the art of hand-to-hand combat to boys from poor families after work, goes on hikes with them, tells them about the greatness of Russia and the treachery of the Yid Masons. He is ascetic and unselfish; he instills in his pupils a notion of their chosenness. The joy of singing together in a choir, the aesthetic of the uniform, the emblem, the banner. Standing shoulder to shoulder. A man’s world: the militia unit, the Cossack village, the platoon. Your comrade will always come to your aid. The enemy never sleeps.

In the words of August Bebel, anti-Semitism is the socialism of fools. Given the practical absence of a socialist component in a social movement, any social protest can be absorbed by the Nazis. The Jewish barkeeper, journalist, tycoon, dentist, and factory director are rarely encountered today. But Jewish bankers and Jewish cabinet ministers have appeared in their place. A Russia ruled by Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir Gusinsky is a perfect image of the anti-world.

WHAT IS THE WEAKNESS OF RUSSIAN ANTI-FASCISM?

The spirit of contemporary anti-fascism is contained in its appeal to the policeman. The anti-fascists pester the authorities, demanding that they imprison the Nazis under Article 74 of the Criminal Code. This is almost never of any use. Then the liberal press begins lamenting the imperfections of the universe and accusing the militia, the prosecutor’s office, the courts, of tolerating, even of sympathizing with, the extremists. That’s all true. But is it really any easier to put the mafioso, the bribe-taker, the swindler in jail? There is no rule of law in Russia, we’re "blackened in the courts by black injustice". And it’s as useless to lament that as it is to bemoan unrequited love. "Go to the league for sexual reforms" was Ostap Bender’s advice in such situations. [Ostap Bender, a fast-talking con man, is the hero of two novels by Soviet satirists Ilf and Petrov.]

Anti-fascism lacks a marketing plan. Books and articles on ritual trials in Russia during the reign of Nicholas I, about the relationship between the authorities and the Union of the Russian People, about the peculiarities of Ferenc Szálasi’s Arrow Cross thugs in Hungary or the Black Guards in Romania sometimes arouse interest. But Shturmovik [The Storm Trooper], Limonka [The Hand Grenade], and Russky Poryadok [Russian Order] can be purchased on the streets, while anti-fascist studies are inaccessible to the potential reader. The Nazis are accessible. You want to find a Nazi? There he is at the "wailing wall" [a meeting place on Nevsky Prospect favored by nationalists, communists, and anarchists of all stripes], on the picket line in the Catherine Garden, at a demonstration. But where is the anti-fascist?

The Nazi speaks of the imperfection of the existing order, constructs a mythical model of it, and proposes a false strategy of struggle. But he answers the question, What is to be done? The anti-fascist is warm and conservative. He doesn’t have a complete picture of social reality. He doesn’t expose existing visible defects, but points to future, possible misfortunes. To the young person thinking about life and looking for a role model, the anti-fascist doesn’t offer a concrete task, but a struggle with what doesn’t yet exist. Fascism is hideous, but Auschwitz ceased sending up smoke in 1944. Meanwhile, parents aren’t being paid their wages, the government is unaccountable, the stronger always blames the weaker. And the politician must respond to the dangers and imperfections of today.

Despite the historical erudition of contemporary liberals, unlike the rightists they don’t have their own concept of history. The symbol of Yegor Gaidar’s Russia’s Democratic Choice party—Peter the Great—was a tyrant and an expansionist. It’s quite unlikely that Peter would have given his vote to Russia’s Choice. Peter’s regiment of boy soldiers would more likely have swelled the ranks of the RNE. Pyotr Stolypin, the favorite of our liberals, pursued a firm policy of "Russia for Russians", ruling the marchlands and national minorities with an iron fist. And it isn’t by chance that the works of Dostoevsky, the darling of the intelligentsia, rub covers in rightist bookshops with the writings of Adolf Hitler. Beauty will save the world, of course, and one must not forget the tears of a child, but Dostoevsky’s opinions of the Yids, the Tatars, and perfidious Albion were quite explicit.

Iosif Volotsky and Konstantin Pobedonostsev are all on the side of Barkashov. [Volotsky and Pobednostsev are figures from Russian history who might be thought to symbolize conservative tendencies in Russian society.] The real allies of the liberals in their anti-fascist zeal are not the pre-revolutionary authorities, but the pre-revolutionary opposition. Herzen, Chernyshevsky, Dobroliubov, and Plekhanov are, however, out of fashion. [All four men were Russian liberal writers and social activists in the 19th and early 20th centuries.] They gave birth to the "demons" of Bolshevism. But whoever does not accept the 1905 Revolution and the February Revolution of 1917 must accept the trial of Beilis [a Jew accused of the ritual murder of a Gentile boy in Kiev at the beginning of the century; he was acquitted], the Russification of Finland, and the war of church and state against the Christian sectarians.

Anti-fascism could amount to something if it were to create its own youth subculture. Anti-fascism must involve real risk and be heroic. The anti-fascism of the International Brigades, the Maquis, and the New Left generated its own aesthetics, its own ethics, its own sociology. The battle for the streets isn’t fought by young people and the police. It’s fought by different groups of young people. Until the teenager from the Petersburg outskirts starts going to an athletics club led by a student or a pro-Western engineer, he will choose the club led by the nationalist mentor. Until democracy appeals to the traditions of revolutionary democracy it will be devoid of any ideological basis and lack any real strength.

If the government doesn’t protect the citizens, the citizens must protect themselves. By any means necessary.