46
PARTISAN REVIEW
feeling in an intermixed world, strive to have everyone become aware
of his personal responsibility to nation and LO race ... Disorderl y
hybridization must be sLOpped.
We cannot remain silent when the extreme increase in danger from
the organized forces of large-scale Zionism and Satanism has become
obvious LO all ... Many of these blasphemers and destroyers of our
national, cultural, and spiritual values have now found shelter in
Zionist centers in countries of the West, especially the U.S.... world
Zionism is conducting an insidious struggle against our government
both from without and from within.
I think this is enough. Nationalism in a people who as a nation are
oppressed by no one, and who are also in the position of oppressor, is
absurd and can only take the form of chauvinism and extreme reaction.
Dissidents among the national minorities and republics of the USSR of
course reacted sharply
to
the appearance of the Russian nationalist
opposition, but with an intensification of anti-Russian feeling! Sol–
zhenitsyn and Shafarevich anxiously warn that the overheating of
national passions within the country may end in bloodshed. And they
are right; but after they advanced their nationalist ideas, the heat rose
still higher and the country moved toward the abyss of slaughter
between its peoples; at the present time, any crisis could easily push it
over the brink.
The implications may be summarized by an anecdote which a
Ukranian nationalist recently told me. "You assure us," he said, "that
most Russians harbor no chauvinist feeling in their hearts. Well, that
may be true of men like Solzhenitsyn and Maksimov, but what about
Amalrik? He was a Westernizer, democrat, anti-imperialist, even a
Russophobe. But as soon as he left the Soviet Union he declared that in
his heart he was closer to the Russian nationalists, and couldn't
restrain tears of pride reading Lermontov's lines, 'From the Urals to
the great river Danube, the troops move swaying and shining... .'
In
his mind, he said, he understood that the troops were moving to do
something bad, like the occupation of Czechoslovakia, but in his heart
he couldn't help being proud. This is the same sort of thing we heard
from the Germans, " my companion continued. " In their minds, they
said, they criticized Nazism, Hitler; but when they recalled how the
German troops moved 'swaying and shining' from Normandy to the
Volga, they couldn't help feeling pridel"
This conversation prompted me to analyze the roots, nature, and
magnitude of the Russian nationalist movement and to assess the
dangers it may pose. But first a disclaimer: because elementary free-
