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PARTISAN REVIEW
Russian Revolution and pouringJewish blood into Lenin. I would like to point
out that nowhere else in real literature, discounting the shrill, vulgar sort, does
one find the equivalent of the anti-Semitic sentiment expressed in
Lenin in
Zurich.
The notion of Lenin's quarter ofJewish blood is a metaphor in the
book for the worldwide influence ofJews, the pervasive smell of their blood
pursuing us fi"om Auschwitz, where six million of them were destroyed.
In the West, we have Solzhenitzyn, and in the East, Shafarevich, con–
ducting an "inquiry" into the supposed universal Russophobia on the part of
the Jews. In fact, there is no Russophobia on the part of the Jews. To be
sure, there are examples of Russophobia on the part of minorities who have
been subordinated by the Russians, such as the Poles or the Baits, but cer–
tainly not on a worldwide scale. For half a century, no Jew has held a leading
position in the Soviet government. Yet for fifty years, some kind of Russo–
phobic Satan has supposedly prevented things from getting better. In fact,
perhaps the Jews might have been able to change things for the better.
In my view, nationalism itself is not a serious danger today.
It
can be a
positive, flourishing thing, until it brings out from under itselfa poisonous fer–
ment - the seeking of an enemy. Something similar has already taken place
in the Soviet Union , with the conceptualization of the class enemy. The
struggle against the class enemy continued and was conducted even after
there were no classes left.
Today, Russian nationalists who call themselves patriots are
characterized by a new mania, the mania of Russophobia. The idea of the
class enemy has been metamorphosized into the idea of the Russophobe, the
bourgeois encirclement and penetration of the Soviet Union. It is a modifica–
tion of Stalinist imagery, of Brezhnev's terminology, of ideological myth. It
repels me not just by its vulgarity but because it is dangerous. After all, if
there is an association of both foreign and internal Russophobes who are
striving to destroy the soul, the body, the memory of the Russian people
themselves, then one must strike back at them.
When a multinational empire is at the brink of dissolution, as I think the
Soviet Union today is, various people begin to put forth nationalistic ideas.
This, after all, is the way many great empire have ended. The rise of a
powerful and militant Russian nationalism is an attempt to protect and support
the Soviet empire. The Soviet Union today reminds me of a huge warehouse
filled with combustible materials ready to explode. In this combustible atmo–
sphere the Russian nationalists are playing with matches, one of the most
dangerous ofwhich is called Russophobia.
