Black Hundred: The Rise Of The Extreme Right In Russia

352 Pages·1993·8.448 MB·English

by  Walter Laqueur

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The Rise of The Extreme Right in Russia
W ALTER LRO U EU R
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HarperCollin ^Publishers
black hundred: the rise of the extreme right in Russia. Copyright © 1993 by Walter Laqueur. All
rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be used or reproduced
in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in
critical articles and reviews. For information address HarperCollins Publishers, Inc., 10 East 53rd Street,
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FIRST EDITION
Designed by George J. McKeon
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Laqueur, Walter, 1921-
Black hundred: the rise of the extreme right in Russia/Walter Laqueur. —1st ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-06-018336-5
1. Russia (Federation)—Politics and government. 2. Nationalism—Russia (Federation)
3. Radicalism—Russia (Federation) 4. Right and left (Political science) I. Tide.
DK510.6.L37 1993
320.5'3'0947—dc20 92-54728
93 94 95 96 97 CC/HC 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Introduction vii
part o n e: before th e revolution
1 The Russian Idea and Manifest Destiny 3
2 The Black Hundred and the Emergence of the Russian Right 16
3 The Appearance of the Protocols and the Great Masonic Plot 29
4 “Damn Thee, Black Devil”: The Orthodox Church and the
Radical Right 45
1917-1987
p a rt tw o : com m unism a n d n a tio n alism ,
5 Soviet Patriotism 61
6 Fascism and the Russian Emigration 72
7 The Russian Party and National Bolshevism 86
8 Judaism Without a Mask 106
9 Neopaganism and the Myth of the Golden Age 112
PART THREE: VILLAINS GALORE----THE POSTCOMMUNIST AGE
10 The Ideology of the New Right (1) 119
11 The Ideology of the New Right (2) 154
VI CONTENTS
1987-
PART fo u r: th e s tru g g le f o r pow er,
12 Tsars and Cossacks 183
13 Pamyat 204
14 The Revival of the Orthodox Church 222
15 The New Nationalist Establishment: Literary Manifestos and
Political Initiatives 245
16 Conclusion: Russian Nationalism Today and Tomorrow 272
Bibliographical Note 297
Index 307
Illustrations follow page 174.
INTRODUCTION
in her stormy history Russia has entered a stnuta, an age of
O n ce ag ain
troubles which may last long and the outcome of which is unpredictable.
One of the few certainties at this time is the reappearance of a nationalist
movement firmly believing that Russia can only be saved by a strong,
authoritarian government that restores law and order and pursues a con­
servative policy. The present book deals with the origins of this movement,
its strengths, its inner contradictions, and its likely consequences for Russia
and the world.
Russian politics, generally speaking, have become more “national,”
and this trend is bound to continue. It is the inevitable consequence of the
breakup of the old Soviet Union. Many millions of Russians have found
themselves outside the new Russia, and on the other hand, separatist
groups inside Russia, such as the Tatars, insist on autonomy, if not full
independence. If given free rein this tendency would put into question the
survival of the Russian Republic. These problems could perhaps be solved
or at least eased and defused if moderation and common sense prevailed.
But such attitudes are always in short supply at a time of crisis, and since
a strongly nationalist mood has prevailed among all the non-Russia repub­
lics and nationalities, the stage is set for a collision. The age of nationalist
conflict that ended in Europe in 1945 has reopened in Eastern Europe and
the former Soviet Union.
For many years students of Russia have focused their attention on the
VW INTRODUCTION
left. There seemed to be good reason to do so: The right had been
decisively defeated in 1917; the dissemination of right-wing ideas after this
date was limited to small sectarian groups among the Russian and even
smaller circles among Soviet dissenters. Politically they did not count;
ideologically they had nothing of interest to offer. Why, in the circum­
stances, waste attention on the manifestos of small groups of eccentrics
whose future prospects seemed nil?
True, this impression was not entirely correct. Nationalism and right-
wing ideas, even if submerged, were by no means entirely dead. Ever since
Stalin had opted by necessity for “socialism in one country,” the Soviet
Union had become increasingly nationalist socialist. While communism
claimed to be internationalist in inspiration, many observers realized that
Russia had become as nationalist as it had been under the tsars. There had
been some such prophets even in the early 1920s, mainly among the
émigrés, who had predicted that the Soviet regime would become increas­
ingly nationalist and Russian-traditionalist and that the left-wing element
would gradually wither away. This was the Smena Vekh (“Change of the
Landmarks”) group in Berlin and Paris; some of its leading members
subsequently chose to return to Russia, where most of them perished. They
had correcdy diagnosed a certain trend, but their timetable was mistaken.
They were prophetic in some respects—and very wrong in others. The first
article I wrote on Russian history was on the Smena Vekh phenomenon,
which taught me that it is relatively easy to spot a new intellectual and
political trend early on. But in the real world, some of these trends never
ripen, and, in any case, the ripening usually takes long, because there are
always retarding factors.
It took the greatest political earthquake of our time, the collapse of
communism and the Soviet Union to enable the Russian right to make a
comeback. As long as the Soviet regime existed, the most that a Russian
nationalist could hope for was something akin to National Bolshevism—a
movement that still has many followers even now: One should not under­
rate the strong Communist elements in the new Russian right. Only after
the disintegration of official Soviet ideology could traditionally right-wing
thoughts and slogans openly be propagated. It could be argued that the
difference between official anti-Zionism before the age of reform, and
present-day anti-Semitism is not enormous. Everyone knew that “anti-
Zionism” was a code word; its true meaning was clear to even the least
sophisticated. Or, to give another example: “Russophobia” has been of late
the great watchword of the Russian right; but the concept did exist before
1987, under other names such as “anti-Sovietism.” There is some truth in
these arguments, but it is also correct that the official ideology could not
INTRODUCTION IX
be frontally attacked before ¿jlasnost, and it would have been unthinkable
to praise monarchism or the White armies of the civil war.
The breakdown of Soviet communism caused an ideological as well as
a political void, and nature abhors a vacuum in Russia even more than
elsewhere. Some saw the breakdown of the dictatorship as the great oppor­
tunity for the return of freedom to Russia, part of a worldwide trend
toward democratic institutions, the realization of the dream of generations
of the Russian intelligentsia. But the odds were heavily stacked against it.
Democratic traditions have not been deeply rooted in Russian history.
Furthermore, the breakdown of Soviet rule was bound to result in severe
crises, political, social, and economic. Such periods are not conducive to the
consolidation of democratic institutions. Thus, the right-wing-nationalist
forces had a good chance in the struggle both for the soul of Russia and
for its political future.
The present study deals with the Russian far right and the extreme
nationalists. But aggressive chauvinism and xenophobia can be found in all
the former Soviet republics. As a result, the prospects for democracy in
most of these republics cannot be rated high, even not in the most devel­
oped of them, certainly not in the near future. The odds would have been
better if a modus vivendi would have been found enabling the ex-republics
to coexist and collaborate peacefully. But this was not to be, and as a result
nationalist tensions have been exacerbated everywhere. If democracy
should fail in Russia, the list of those responsible will be long, including
both tsars and Communist rulers who failed to transform in time their
empire into a commonwealth of free nations. But the list of gravediggers
will also include the separatists who used their newly won freedom not for
reconciliation and compromise but to turn against each other and against
Russia, who almost overnight turned from oppressed to oppressors.
Let us summarize the case of the Russian nationalists. The right argues
that a gradual, slower transformation of the Soviet Union would have been
greatly preferable. The price to be paid for dismantling the old system—the
loss of all the non-Russian republics, including the Ukraine—was too high.
Three centuries of Russian history were undone in a few days in August
1991 as the result of the weakness of the center. To save the remnant, a
spiritual as well as a political renaissance is needed, a return to the national
and religious values of the Russian people. It is poindess to embrace
Western values and to copy Western insdtutions. Russia had always fol­
lowed a road of its own; political systems that functioned elsewhere were
unsuitable for Russia. So was parliamentary democracy—for, as Solzhenit­
syn has written, party rivalry distorted the national will.
In this time of troubles the country needed not only a strong leadership
X INTRODUCTION
but a set of national and religious beliefs that would sustain it through the
hard years (or decades) ahead. These beliefs existed, they had only to be
disinterred from underneath the rubble and brought again to the con­
sciousness of the people. The only alternative is nihilism, further decline,
the descent to anarchy, perhaps the eventual disappearance of the Russian
people.
This, in briefest oudine, is the case of the “Russian party” against the
“Westerners.”1 It is agreed in, at least to a certain extent, by some liberals,
who agree that nowhere (except perhaps after total defeat in war and
military occupation) has a society ever transformed itself from a totalitarian
system to a democracy. A transition period was needed in which a strong,
authoritarian central power provided leadership.
The worse the situation became, the more persuasive appeared the
slogans of the Russian party. But its case suffered from some basic weak­
nesses and inconsistencies. The Russian nationalists always argued that the
former (Communist) regime had been one of “nationalist nihilism”—
which was unfair to Stalin and his heirs, whose anticosmopolitan fervor had
been second to none. The Communist regime had claimed, inter alia, that
all important inventions had been made by Russians. Ever since the 1930s
the traditional heroes of Russian history, from Alexander Nevsky to the
nineteenth-century generals, had been paid due reverence. Following the
demise of communism, Dmitri Donskoi, the hero of the battle of Kulikovo
(1380), and Sergei of Radonezh, the priest who had blessed Dmitri and his
soldiers on the eve of the battle, also became national heroes. This was
certainly a change in emphasis, but it did not amount to a spiritual revolu­
tion.
The immediate difficulties facing Russia are largely economic and so­
cial. Yet nationalism pur sang does not have a specific economic and social
doctrine. The Russian nationalists have been vocal insofar as their anticapi­
talist dislikes and complaints are concerned. But they have not offered
specific alternatives other than some generalities concerning national inter­
est and national solidarity.
Nationalism can still be a powerful force for the mobilization of dissat­
isfied and disadvantaged elements, and of all those whose patriotic senti­
ments were deeply offended and who believe that radical, possibly violent
action has to be taken to save the fatherland. There is the time-honored
Russian tendency toward radicalism and extremism, toward pursuing an
idea or ideal relentlessly, well beyond the confines of good sense. The 1
1. “Westerners” is the incorrect term used by their political foes. Today’s Russian Westerners
are not uncritical admirers of the West, nor were the zapadniki of the nineteenth century.