Patriotism Gets No Respect

Viktor Toporov

Petersburg’s political and spiritual crisis—making allowances for the city’s provincialism (and with one important exception)—resembles the crisis in the capital. In any case, the two megalopolises bear more resemblance to each other than to the rest of Russia. Which makes it all the more interesting to get to the bottom of the above—mentioned exception.

But first a word about provincialism. Against the will of Petersburgers themselves and the widely proclaimed intentions of the municipal authorities, almost from the very beginning of perestroika and, in particular, of post-perestroika, the feeling has steadily become stronger that there is a certain second-rate quality to everything that happens in our city, as well as to everything that comes out of it. Having flickered briefly in the Soviet, and then Russian, arena, Petersburg politicians disappeared from it quickly and ignominiously. Petersburg political clubs died their own deaths; Petersburg political parties simply remained "scenes." Petersburg television was pauperized, plundered, then vanished; Petersburg radio is listened to only willy-nilly. The large-circulation Petersburg press has become medium-circulation. Just as before, Petersburg culture plumes itself on what it produced during the last years of "stagnation" (from the Maly Drama Theatre to rock singers). Petersburg museums and libraries are on the verge of closing and in permanent expectation of either theft or arson. Nothing at all is heard from Petersburg science; Petersburg industry is "idling." The tourism boom just didn’t materialize. The Zenith soccer club won back its place in the premier division after much torment and now maintains a undistinguished record. And so forth. The incomes of Petersburgers of all classes are half those of their Moscow counterparts, while prices are practically the same: that is, each of us is twice as poor as his Moscow "twin."

The drain of brains and talent from the area continues at increasing rate. But the "launching" of Petersburg talents into national orbit has ceased altogether. True, this does not apply to bureaucrats, who move one after the other to Moscow, but the word talent does not apply to them either.

In local elections, the Petersburg populace was evenly divided (in contrast to Muscovites, who unanimously supported their own mayor). In national elections, Moscow and Petersburg vote identically (except for a certain Yablokist tendency in Petersburg). The political and pseudo-political structures are similar. But there is, nevertheless, the exception we have mentioned twice already: enlightened patriotism, enlightened statism, and an inclination toward "socialism with a human face" (though this last, admittedly, has gone out of fashion in Moscow) are altogether absent from our city. That is, they might be present (embryonically, latently, nidally), but their presence is not felt. They do not exist—or it is as if they did not exist. Such attitudes get, as it were, no respect. They are permitted and grudgingly tolerated, but only on a grassroots, marginal, and lumpenized level. Which is where the political parties of the corresponding spectrum and their periodical publications dwell. But it is not so much a question of patriotic or neo-communist forces lacking political—or, if you like, electoral—prospects, as it is of their lacking (authentic or imaginary) respectability.

The (public) existence of Viktor Rozov or Stanislav Govorukhin, Ilya Glazunov or Fyodor Klykov [Moscow cultural establishment figures of the Soviet and post-Soviet periods who advocate a conservative political philosophy] would be unthinkable in our city. Were even the economic reformers of the Gorbachev era Petrakov and Shmelev to live here, they immediately would be harassed, silenced, declared renegades, and so on, in whatever order you like. An establishment opposed to the course of reforms, and—more broadly—to the entire path chosen by the country’s leadership, is impossible to imagine in Petersburg: when the late Metropolitan Ioann took up these sorts of positions, he was all but defrocked. Just as Sergei Kuriokhin [avant-garde rock musician, composer, film actor] was nearly ostracized for his provocative participation in leftist actions. Just as Alexander Nevzorov [famous Petersburg television journalist] was packed off to the Duma to the great delight of many. Patriotism and/or neo-communism, I repeat, is permitted in Petersburg—but only as a marginal, lumpenized movement, headed by lunatics or hysterical women. And with it is with these—the crazy and the hysterical—that the democratic establishment does combat, now in anti-fascist guise, now simply in pro-presidential guise, presenting them as genuine—and dangerous—influencers of opinion while consciously avoiding quarrels with the enlightened patriots, who have been declared non-existent.

The reasons? In my opinion, there are three: two characteristic of Petersburg and one related to Moscow. After Sergei Kirov (that is, in any case, for half a century), there were no genuinely popular party leaders: party work was organized accordingly. Unnatural selection (as Andrei Amalrik termed it) was far from inherent in CPSU personnel policy at all times and in all places, but in "the cradle of three revolutions" this was precisely the case. Leningraders therefore lost faith in the practice (and, accordingly, in the ideals) of Communism earlier and more decisively than people in other regions. Hence the universal aversion both to Smolny [the seat of the municipal government in Leningrad/St. Petersburg] and to everything that emanates from it (this aversion has now been transferred to the mayor’s office). It washed away the soil from under the feet of the city’s communists even more thoroughly than the half-constructed dam in the Gulf of Finland. That is the first reason.

The other is that Leningrad is, as a line from a famous movie puts it, a small town. Small, of course, in the sense that everyone knows everyone else, everyone watches what everyone else is doing; when necessary, everyone votes (and thinks) the same. This practice formed (and was secretly institutionalized) as far back as the years of stagnation, but it has been continued into our times: this phenomenon, termed "one-mindedness" by Kozma Prutkov, has in our city a barrack-room character made none the less so for its specious democratism. The enlightened patriot is declared a vulgar patriot—and is thereby excluded from the circle. Thus he prefers to not say a word about his patriotism (or to express himself in an Aesopian language that has lost nothing of its timeliness). That is the second reason.

And the third reason, the Moscow factor: however much the capital’s oppositionists hate Yuri Luzhkov (at least they did in the beginning), they cannot fail secretly to recognize in him the enlightened patriot so dear to their hearts. Not the economic planner in his trademark cap (Luzhkov’s camouflage), but the politician with superpower attitudes and presidential ambitions. Tacit (and occasionally open) support from the Moscow mayor; his cautious, but emphatically symbolic behavior (from the reconstruction of the Church of Christ the Savior to an innocent joke—"I’m the only Russian we have in power, the others are all Zhvanetskys." [Mikhail Zhvanetsky is a well-loved Russian-Jewish comedian]); his positions on Chechnya, Sebastopol, Anatoly Chubais; last but not least, his patronage of the arts: all this does not so much reassure the capital’s "superpowerists," as it confers on them the status of an elite, creates a field of power in which (and let us not forget the Moscow television channel controlled by Luzhkov) they can feel themselves to be, and function as, an elite, a part of the establishment. Between the "professional oppositionists" and their secret but powerful patron there exist sectors and strata in which political quarrels are not conducted (because everything is already clear), but a certain position—patriotic and statist-is understood as a matter of course. In the absence of this we get the Petersburg situation—the "wailing wall" and Nina Katerli [Petersburg writer and anti—fascist activist] throwing herself on every embrasure to the general jubilation of the democrats. We get what we have.

It would be worth the while of our city’s elite to give some serious thought as to whether skillfully and artificially suppressing enlightened patriotism is to their advantage. In the 1933 Germany to which they so like to allude, following political scientist Alexander Yanov’s example, the real choice was not between the National Socialists and Communists (the apparently powerful Social Democrats were also, in fact, "offside"). The choice was between the rightist (militarist, revanchist, and unpleasant in many other respects) center and National Socialism. In our time, this choice becomes more real with every passing day. Those who in this city of five million artificially marginalize and lumpenize the ideas of enlightened patriotism risk driving their fellow citizens into much less acceptable organizations and structures. Of course, by agitating for Russia’s Democratic Choice and the Regional Party of the Center [the local branch of Yabloko]—and obtaining results exactly to the contrary.