52
PARTISAN REVIEW
and the desire for a strong, authoritarian regime. The Russian nation–
alists display a totalitarian psychology in their intolerance of dissent,
their dogmatism, and their distorted treatment of history.
Briefly then: the opposition nationalists either belong to the most
demoralized part of the service sector, or are oriented to it, or are
moving parallel to it, like the elite group that has formed around
Solzhenitsyn which is represented in
From Under the Rubble.
Apart
from this elite, the opposition nationalists are characterized by a lack of
intellectual sophistication. They belong to the so-called semi–
intelligentsia, which Montaigne characterized as a very dangerous
phenomenon. Totalitarian state capitalism begets the semi–
intelligentsia in profusion, and it comes mainly from the service sector.
It owes its origin both to the low quality, hasty, almost compulsory
"universal" education (primary and secondary) demanded by forced
industrialization and propaganda, and to the characteristically pitiful
position of the commerce and service sphere under state capitalism. As
a consequence, people who according to their inclinations would have
been, let us say, shop assistants, become journalists or even writers (as
one well-known man of letters said of "writers" like Safronov and
Alekseev). Mandelstam's perceptions, which antedate the appearance
of organized nationalist opposition, are again germane:
"It
is always
among the semieducated that fascism, chauvinism, and hatred [or the
intelligentsia most easily take rool."
The nostalgia for Stalinism among opposition nationalists is
explicable in terms of gains made by the service sector in the Stalinist
era. This time was distinguished by a high rate o[ industrialization and
development of the governmental apparatus, developments which gave
mobility to the service sector and the semi-intelligentsia. Enterprising
and ambitious young people from all sectors of society easily moved up
the ladder through the hierarchy (including that of the party govern–
ment). "Stalinist democracy," characterized by Stalin's mass purges,
also facilitated this process: were one short o[ ability, he could help
clear the way upward by means of denunciation. But by the sixties the
mass purges had ceased, the pace had begun to slacken, a new
intelligentsia had taken shape, and young personnel had begun to
accumulate on the lower rungs of the hierarchical ladders. The number
o[ service sector semi-intelligentsia who could not find a way to
advance began growing. Intellectuals who occupied key posts treated
the semi-intellectuals with scorn.
The Russian nationalist opposition now raised its banner (not
without the aid o[ KGB and "hawk" careerists stuck on the higher
