VADIM BELOTSERKOVSKY
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tion of the democratic movement. Finally, it was a time of emigration,
which is both the symptom and consequence of hopelessness: the
regime was proving sturdier and less decrepit than many people had
expected.
When a social form exhausts the objective reason for its existence
(in this case, to promote industrialization-which does not mean that
industrialization could not have been achieved by some other system)
but continues to exist, then pathological symptoms become inevitable.
The emergence of the Russian nationalist opposition is one such
phenomenon.
I do not think the nationalist opposition would have emerged if
the process of liberalization and democratization-in which all politi–
cally active citizens had become involved, including many who are now
Russian nationalists-had continued. This process would have accom–
plished both the emancipation and the purification of Russian culture.
The democratically inclined intelligentsia had already begun
to
struggle against the falsification of Russian history, for the preserva–
tion of the best traditions and memorials of antiquity. And this was
happening without any nationalist demagoguery, without reference to
ethnic origins or the "Russian spirit."
Russian nationalist manifestos show attitudes and traits which
indicate the causes and origins of the movement. They all express
hatred of the intelligentsia. Although remarks critical of the Soviet
intelligentsia are also found in samizdat works by writers with demo–
cratic leanings, such criticism does not take on the character of a
phobia, as does the nationalist hostility to the educated, which is
accompanied by anti-Semitism and xenophobia. The nationalists also
share a dislike and incomprehension of democracy. Behind this hostil–
ity to democracy li es demophobia; for example, Osipov calls the
contemporary Russian people a "lazy, indecisive, cowardly, bemired,
and moribund nation," and Solzhenitsyn speaks of the "raving
masses" and asks, "How is the nation to be preserved?" The "nation"
here is an abstract nation of the future, and of the past (as they imagine
it) when it was "spirituall y healthy." Solzhenitsyn writes: "For a
thousand years Russia li ved with an authoritarian structure and up to
the beginning of the twentieth century maintained her people in
excellent spiritual health." The question arises whether "Russian
nationalism" is not finally a pseudonym for something else-for other
goals that have nothing to do with the Russian people. Non-Russian
nationalism has no such scorn for its people as they really are today!
Often accompanying these attitudes is open nostalgia for Stalinism
