MARK PERAKH
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tively homogeneous. The trends common to all dissenters were refusal
to
adopt the official ideology and the demand for human rights. In the
course of development, the ideological distinctions among various
dissenting groups has become more and more obvious. These ideolo–
gies may be forerunners of the political parties of the future.
To analyze the trends in contemporary Soviet dissent, one is
compelled to simplify the picture by selecting certain principles for
classifying the dissenting groups. They can be classified by means of
three main criteria. The first criterion is the group's location on the
international-national axis (nationalistic axis for short). The second is
its location on the liberal-totalitarian axis, and the third, location on
the atheistic-religious axis (religious axis). Using these criteria, we are
still far from understanding the question in all its complexity. At least,
however, such an approach ensures a more adequate analysis than the
division into rightists and leftists, which lost all rational meaning long
ago.
The ruling oligarchy in the USSR occupies the extreme "right"
position on the totalitarian-liberal axis. On the religious axis it is
located on the atheistic end. As for the nationalistic axis, however, the
situation is far from simple. Indeed, official Soviet ideology proclaims
"internationalism," advertising the so-called "friendship among the
Soviet peoples." The facts prove, however, that the so-called "Union
republics" are no more than colonies of the Moscow rulers. From this
point of view, the Soviet authorities should be placed on the chauvinis–
tic extreme of the nationali t axis. Moreover, inside the ruling group
an increasingly influential faction has evidently arisen that tries to
adapt Russian nationalism
to
the official ideology. This group within
the ruling apparatus may be called "national-communist," and is in
fact similar to Hitler's national socialists. Its growing influence is due
to
the fact that Marxist ideology in Russia has virtually ceased to have
meaning. For the Soviet people Marxism is closely connected with all
the failures of the regime, and the top level of the oligarchy is well
aware of the need for a new ideology. To many top officials, Russian
chauvinism seems a successful substitute for the bankrupt ideology of
Lenin and Stalin.
Among the Party members another group may be called "com–
munists with human faces." The adherents of this group hope to save
the Party's strength by means of a certain "liberalization" while
preserving the one-party ystem. The historian Roy Medvedev, now
editor of a Samizdat magazine,
The Twentieth Century,
edited for a
long time another Samizdat journal,
Political Diary,
in which these
views were expressed. While Medvedev obviously belongs to the dissent,
