The Thinking Reed

The theme of ‘spiritual freedom’, in contrast to ‘law’ and ‘right’ — in short, to civic freedom — is a favourite idea of the Russian ‘back-to-the soil’ writers who, instead of combating slavery, seek freedom in it. In Kozhanov we find everything — eulogy of the ‘living’ Byzantine culture, abuse of ‘cosmopolitanism’ and Zionism. In general cosmopolitans are, theoretically, ‘persons without a homeland’, while Zionists are those who call on the Jews ‘to find a homeland’. Kozhanov calls Zionism a form of cosmopolitanism. It is not hard to explain this strange use of words. ‘Cosmopolitan’ and ‘Zionist’ were both terms used under Stalin as synonyms for Jews… Anti-Semitism was concealed under phrases about anti-Zionism and anti-cosmopolitanism.

Here we learn that Batu’s empire, which destroyed great civilizations, was no worse than the empire of Charlemagne, which laid the foundations of modern Western civilization. According to Kozhanov there was ‘no fundamental difference between them’.111 Generally speaking, the Tatar yoke did no particular harm to Russia, but unfortunately ‘the Tatars…fell under the influence of cosmopolitanism’! Consequently, it became necessary to fight against ‘the cosmopolitan horde’.112 Thus Kozhanov is able, with a clear conscience, to justify Russian nationalism, because it developed ‘under the pressure of cosmopolitan tendencies’.113 (The writer forgets to mention that for the last 400 years nationalism was the ruling ideology, and there was no ‘pressure’ on Russian thought except that of the nationalist state.) Later, Kozhanov makes two or three more historical ‘discoveries’ — that Russian history is less sanguinary than that of the West, that there was always more creative freedom here than in Western Europe, and so on. In general, as he sees it, Russians were more complete persons than Westerners. Over there were ‘handicapped’ people, whereas here we had ‘personalities’ (‘blessed with grace’): ‘It is impossible not to see that the fullest freedom enjoyed by a handicapped person has nothing to offer a personality whose aim is a way and meaning of life that lies beyond that freedom.’114

Kozhanov proved excessively frank, and provoked a sharp outcry. Pravda denounced him. Nearly all the serious statements by the New Right in the legal press came to much the same conclusion. But those in power never tried to stop these people’s activity altogether, as they did with Novy Mir. It may be that Pravda's pronouncement merely increased Kozhanov’s prestige among opposition-minded intellectuals who were disenchanted with Marxism. However, it is not only in such skirmishes with the official ideologues that we must seek the reasons for the success of the ‘back-to-the-soil’ writers. As I have said already, the neo-nationalists raised some real questions which had been little discussed before they appeared.

Russia really is a country of unrealized possibilities. Although rich in resources and with an immense territory and a numerous population, it cannot be numbered among the prosperous countries. So, then, potentialities neglected in the past must be exploited in the future. The only question is — how? What road must we follow in order to make the dream come true? That problem was already there in Pushkin’s polemic with Chaadaev. We see it running through the entire history of Russian culture, right down to Tarkovsky’s films (his celebrated Zerkalo [A Mirror] makes us all return to this historical riddle). ‘The Russian thinkers of the nineteenth century,’ wrote Berdyaev, ‘pondering over the destinies of Russia and its vocation, continually draw attention to the fact that this potentiality, this lack of expression, this failure to actualize the strength of the Russian people, is a very pledge of the greatness of its future’.115