The Future Is History: How Totalitarianism Reclaimed Russia

Evgenia was no longer involved with any political party. Gay activism had also suddenly lost its way after Yeltsin repealed the sodomy law for no reason that had anything to do with actual gays and lesbians in Russia. She decided to boycott the December 1993 election: the idea was, clearly, to create a pliant parliament and to ram through a constitution drafted behind closed doors, and she wanted nothing to do with either. But if she was going to vote for anyone, she would pick Vladimir Zhirinovsky and his Liberal Democratic Party.³⁵ Its platform, and Zhirinovsky's public

statements, were anything but liberal or democratic. The Western media called him an ultranationalist. Russians were more likely to see him as either a clown or a truthsayer.

Unless we get back the historical borders of Russia, at least those that existed before the 1917 Revolution, or those that corresponded to the 1977 [Soviet] Constitution, we are slowly going to degrade and die out. . . . That is what the West wants. The West is afraid of us, and this circumstance must be made use of in the resurrection of Russia. When I speak of this, I am accused of being a "fascist," a "Hitler scaring other people." We have been feared for a

millennium. That is our capital.³⁶

That passage from a 1993 speech, and many others like it— Zhirinovsky was a prolific speaker—certainly sounded like ultranationalism. But his speeches were both more and less than that. They promised a return to simplicity after years of the soul-searching that perestroika had demanded, and the mind-numbing economic and legalistic debates of the Yeltsin years. They were triumphantly anti- political.

If Evgenia and Boris Mikhailovich were merely listening to people who were flirting with ultranationalist and fascist rhetoric, then Dugin was going to the source. He had grown fascinated with Hitler's philosophy and system of governance. He produced and narrated a documentary movie series called The Mysteries of the Century: The Mysticism of the Third Reich, a close study that mixed archival research and rumor. The first episode asked whether it might be true that Hitler had access to "ancient knowledge" that led to the invention of the atomic bomb. Dugin also wondered aloud whether it was possible that evidence of the Nazis' satanic practices had been elided from the transcripts of the Nuremberg trials. The film hinted at a Western conspiracy to conceal the true nature of Hitler's power, and also promised perhaps to show how a disillusioned society could be brought to cohesion. "The streets are filled with the Brownian motion of disappointed Germans," explained the voice-over to footage of early 1930s Berlin. "But a drop of some magical catalyst has already

fallen into this mass and chaos will soon turn to order. Every loser in this desolate world of profit-driven decisions and outdated religious dogma will be transformed. He will follow a Holy Grail that will grant him power over all the world." Cut to footage of Germans marching in formation and throwing their hands up in the Hitler salute.³⁷ The three-part miniseries was broadcast on Russia's two leading federal channels in the fall of 1993, and Dugin, who was on-screen for minutes at a time, leafing through what looked like archival documents and telling a story of mysticism and world domination, became famous.

On election night, the country's leading television channel was broadcasting the returns live. Sixty percent of voters approved of the new constitution—enough to make it the country's foundational document in accordance with the very low bar set by Yeltsin's September decree. Of the thirteen parties that had succeeded in getting on the ballot during the very short campaign, eight got enough votes to sit in parliament. Zhirinovsky's Liberal Democrats were firmly in the lead with 23 percent. Russia's Choice, the government's party, led by Gaidar, got 15.5 percent. The Communist Party came in third with 12.4 percent. "Russia, you have lost your mind!" shouted a well-known writer, Yuri Karyakin, who had been invited as a guest commentator. Then he stormed out of the studio.³⁸

seven

EVERYONE WANTS TO BE A MILLIONAIRE

for zhanna, politics ended in 1991. Until that fall, everything that happened on television had also happened in the Nemtsov family kitchen—first in the strange wooden house in central Gorky, and then in the two-rooms-plus-a-kitchen they had been granted a few bus stops from the center of town. When conversation did not concern elections and reforms, it centered on food and shortages, which led right back to reform, and elections.