The Thinking Reed

It is well known that both the Marxists and the Westernist-minded liberal intellectuals reacted with great hostility to the upsurge of nationalism. This attitude was most sharply expressed by the brilliant polemicist and culturologist L. Batkin, when he remarked that ‘some people feel a “nostalgia for the East” which, though worthy of respect, is reactionary and therefore doomed.’79 Batkin reproached these people for fearing to assume responsibility for their own actions and choice of direction, preferring to rely on ready-made absolute ‘truths’ — that is, clichés. A quest for one’s own path and spiritual freedom, he insisted, does not mean a fall from grace. Some Christians, too (for example L. Pinsky and G. Pomerants), reacted negatively to the new nationalism even though the nationalists usually claim to be religious. Before starting to criticize Russian nationalism, however, we must note its heterogeneous character. Among the representatives of the ‘back-to-the-soil movement’, as the nationalists like to call themselves, there are moderate, liberal-minded people like S. Likhachev, the author of Zametki o russkom. There is a whole group — among whom are numbered our ‘village prose’ writers V. Belov, V. Rasputin, G. Troepol’sky and V. Soloukhin — who are mostly connected with the journal Nash Sovremennik, which, in the words of W. Kasack, ‘has gradually become the organ linking the Russophil authors with the countryside.’80 They see in their link with tradition, with popular culture, an alternative to official pseudo-populism, and turn to the values of the past in order to counterpose them to contemporary ‘consumer society’.

Mikhail Agursky describes the characteristics of the political philosophy of the ‘village prose school’ as isolationism, anti-militarism and disappointment with internationalism, which is especially marked in Abramov and Rasputin. The ‘village prose’ writers are the most peaceable group among the nationalists, but the more aggressive Neo-Slavophils are also inclined towards isolationism:

For some, Russia itself is the ideal, even without the Union Republics; for others it is a powerful Russian Empire which will make other countries tremble but will not attempt to seize them by force. Isolationism is sometimes linked with pacifism, while militarism, on the other hand, is seen by others as an important, even essential part of national life without which the nation is in danger of degeneration.81

It must be realized that people like Rasputin think quite differently from somebody like Ilya Glazunov.