Hotmail  |  Gmail  |  Yahoo  |  Justice Mail
powered by Google
WWW http://www.JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com

Add JFNC Google Bar Button to your Browser Google Bar Group  
 
 
Welcome To Justice For North Caucasus Group

Log in to your account at Justice For North Caucasus eMail system.

Request your eMail address

eMaill a Friend About This Site.

Google Translation

 

 

Window On Eurasia: Future Moscow Revolutionaries Seen Using Nationalism The Way Lenin Used Marxism, Recent Russian Novels Suggest

posted by eagle on August, 2009 as ANALYSIS / OPINION


FRIDAY, AUGUST 14, 2009

Window on Eurasia: Future Moscow Revolutionaries Seen Using Nationalism the Way Lenin Used Marxism, Recent Russian Novels Suggest

Paul Goble

Vienna, August 14 – A close reading of serious contemporary Russian fiction, a Moscow novelist and critic says, suggests that “the main force which will contend for power in Russia” in the future will be “an organization of technocrats” who will use nationalism as a means to come power but not be guided by it any more than Lenin was by Marxism.
In an essay published in “Novaya gazeta,” Dmitry Bykov argues that serious fiction provides a better guide to where a society is headed than do the newspapers, which seldom provide a better perspective than one can gain about someone’s family life by investigating the content of its trash (www.novayagazeta.ru/data/2009/087/31.html).
And in support of his contention, he carefully examines the following authors and their works: Denis Gutsko and his “The Little House in Armageddon,” Aleksandr Kabakov and his “The Deserter,” and Vyacheslav Rybakov and both his “Next Year in Moscow” and especially that writer’s “Our Star: the Star of Wormwood.”
According to the Bykov, these books show that “in today’s Russia there is already operating everywhere a force which in the final analysis can achieve power, but we do not see this force only because in revolution situations it is somehow better for it not to advertise itself,” as Russia’s own pre-1917 experience showed. 
At that time, the revolutionaries reported in the newspapers and written up in most novels – the Socialist Revolutionaries, for example – proved incapable of taking advantage of the crisis when it occurred, unlike the Bolsheviks about whom the papers almost never wrote and whose membership consisted of people about whom only a very few novelists focused on.
Now, the situation is the same, Bykov argues. The newspapers focus groups like the Communists, the Movement Against Illegal Immigration (DPNI) and the “half-forbidden” National Bolsheviks, as do some popular novelists. But “the force which will make use of the first serious crisis of power will come not out of this political field.”
At present, Russian newspaper readers “know nothing” about such people, Bykov continues, just as Russian newspaper readers 120 years ago “knew nothing about Lenin.” But some of Russia’s most insightful novelists are portraying the milieu out of which such a powerful new force will emerge.
In the telling of these novelists, the critic suggests, “this political force must have well-extended horizontal lies, a reliable system of conspiracy, a certain selection of the simplest slogans and a minimum of moral limitations.” Further, it “must be directed to the radical modernization of the country because no other slogan now will receive genuine mass support.”
The price of their program will be “extremely high,” and the basis for it “most probably will be nationalist because however bitter this sounds, in contemporary Russia, a [nationalistic] slogan is the only one which does not appear completely compromised in the eyes of the majority” of the population.
This movement will be lead, these novels suggest by a force capable of “contending for power in Russia after the next serious cataclysm. It will most likely be an organization of technocrats with Soviet experience, who viewed the 1990s as a personal tragedy, and will be directed toward a technological breakthrough and a radical struggle with corruption.”
In the scenarios of the novels he reviews, all such forces of this kind will use nationalism, but “in reality it will mean for the organization no more than Marxism meant for Lenin.” That is, it will be for them what Marxist theory was for the Bolsheviks, “a cover for the seizure of power with a dictatorship to power.”
And at the head of this new movement will be “a leader – real or a marionette [controlled by others] – who should be either an officer with experience in Chechnya or one of the victims of Russian jurisprudence during recent years, preferably in cases connected with inter-ethnic conflicts.”
Would this technocratic authoritarian outcome be “worse for Russia” than any other? Bykov says that he does not think so, adding that he does not even think “that the Bolsheviks were the worst variant because they were finally able to realize the modernization of the country they wanted albeit at an inhuman cost.”
Indeed, some of the alternatives on offer in the critic’s opinion would be worse, including one that at least some readers are likely to view as dangerously close to the one Bykov points to: an alliance of nationalists and technocrats without a deeper purpose and thus incapable of moving Russia out of its current impasse.

comments (0)


1 - 1 of 1

Post comment

Your name*

Email address*

Url

Comments*

Verification code*







 RSS FEED


New Posts



Search Analysis Opinion



ANALYSIS / OPINION



Archive


 december 2013

 november 2013

 october 2013

 september 2013

 august 2013

 july 2013

 june 2013

 may 2013

 april 2013

 march 2013

 february 2013

 december 2012

 august 2012

 july 2012

 april 2012

 march 2012

 february 2012

 july 2011

 june 2011

 may 2011

 april 2011

 march 2011

 february 2011

 january 2011

 december 2010

 november 2010

 october 2010

 september 2010

 august 2010

 july 2010

 june 2010

 may 2010

 april 2010

 march 2010

 february 2010

 january 2010

 december 2009

 november 2009

 october 2009

 september 2009

 august 2009

 july 2009

 june 2009

 may 2009

 april 2009

 march 2009

 february 2009

 january 2009

 december 2008

 november 2008

 october 2008

 august 2008

 july 2008

 may 2008

 february 2008

 december 2007

 november 2007

 october 2007

 september 2007

 august 2007

 july 2007

 june 2007

 may 2007

 april 2007

 march 2007

 february 2007

 january 2007

 december 2006

 november 2006

 october 2006

 september 2006

 august 2006

 july 2006

 june 2006

 may 2006

 april 2006

 march 2006

 february 2006

 january 2006

 december 2005

 november 2005

 october 2005

 september 2005

 august 2005

 july 2005

 june 2005

 may 2005

 april 2005

 april 2000

 february 2000



Acknowledgement: All available information and documents in "Justice For North Caucasus Group" is provided for the "fair use". There should be no intention for ill-usage of any sort of any published item for commercial purposes and in any way or form. JFNC is a nonprofit group and has no intentions for the distribution of information for commercial or advantageous gain. At the same time consideration is ascertained that all different visions, beliefs, presentations and opinions will be presented to visitors and readers of all message boards of this site. Providing, furnishing, posting and publishing the information of all sources is considered a right to freedom of opinion, speech, expression, and information while at the same time does not necessarily reflect, represent, constitute, or comprise the stand or the opinion of this group. If you have any concerns contact us directly at: eagle@JusticeForNorthCaucasus.com


Page Last Updated: {Site best Viewed in MS-IE 1024x768 or Greater}Copyright © 2005-2009 by Justice For North Caucasus ®