TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/031290/0312995.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 8KB | 160 lines

                ▓╥                                                          SPECIAL SECTION: THE SOVIET EMPIRE, Page 40

Still in Love With Mother Russia


Fed up with the demands of the other republics, distrustful of
Gorbachev and wary of the West, a growing number of ethnic
Russians are turning into ardent nationalists

By JOHN KOHAN/MOSCOW


    The scene prompted double takes from Muscovites exiting the
Sokol metro station. A few yards away, by the gateway of All
Saints Russian Orthodox Church, waved the flag of
pre-revolutionary Russia. Beneath the banner stood two young men
in czarist military uniforms and two older men -- a grizzled
Soviet army colonel in a karakul hat who proudly displayed an
icon in a gilt-and-silver frame, and a gray-bearded orator who
harangued curious bystanders over a megaphone. In a rambling
tirade, the speaker called for the spiritual renewal of Russia,
denouncing "Jewish Marxists" for masterminding the Bolshevik
Revolution of 1917, which destroyed "all that was sacred to the
Russian people."

    "Why are they doing this at the church?" asked an old woman
on her way to Vespers.

    "They should ship them off to work on a collective farm!"
shouted another woman, clutching an empty shopping bag.

    "I don't see anything wrong with displaying Russian
symbols," countered a burly young man. "We have a right to our
own traditions."

    The nationalist upsurge in other parts of the Soviet Union
has triggered a backlash in Russia, by far the largest and most
populous of the country's republics. Tired of the slogan
OCCUPIERS, GO HOME scrawled on walls from Vilnius to Baku, an
increasingly vocal minority of ethnic Russians are demanding
more respect and a better deal for their maligned republic. If
anyone has suffered from 72 years of Communist rule, they say,
it has been the Russians. They witnessed the desecration of
their national shrines, the extermination of their brightest
talents, and the economic and ecological rape of their
resource-rich homeland -- all in the interest of forging a
Soviet Empire where everyone else lives at their expense.

    This new awareness has inspired campaigns to stop the
ecological destruction of the Volga River and to rescue village
churches, converted into everything from sports clubs to
vodka-bottling plants during anti-religious campaigns of the
past. The rich harmonies of Russian Orthodox liturgical music
now sound in concert halls, and the long-banned works of
religious philosophers like Vladimir Solovyov and Nicholas
Berdyayev have been rediscovered. But amid this cultural
renaissance, there are disquieting signs that bitterness over
Russia's present woes is spawning intolerance of other ethnic
groups.

    Publishing in conservative journals like Nash Sovremennik
(Our Contemporary) and Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard),
ideologists for the Russian renewal movement rant against
"Russophobia" and what they view as a deliberate campaign by the
"ultra-left press" and "Zionists." They have called for an end
to subsidies paid out of the national budget to other republics
and for the creation of separate government agencies, public
organizations and a television network to serve only Russia --
all of which the other 14 republics already enjoy. Valentin
Rasputin, a nationalist writer known for his portrayals of
Russian rural life, has even suggested that Russia consider
seceding from the Soviet Union.

    The Russian nationalists defy easy classification. The
Russian Patriotic Movement peddles pictures of Czar Nicholas II
and newspapers promoting the monarchy as the "only guarantee for
liquidating the vices of the communist years of evil." Other
groups include the pro-communist United Front of Workers. What
unites the monarchists and the neo-Stalinists is opposition to
Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. As literary critic Vladimir
Bondarenko puts it, "Russia does not need perestroika. Russia
needs a revival."

    For such patriots, the greatest threat to the motherland
comes from "radical liberals" who are plotting to seize power.
The nationalists point fingers at members of the reformist
Interregional Group of parliamentary Deputies, such as Moscow
populist Boris Yeltsin and historian Yuri Afanasyev, and at
staunch glasnost editors like Yegor Yakovlev of the weekly
Moscow News. But Enemy No. 1 remains Politburo liberal Alexander
Yakovlev. They have never forgiven him for a 1972 article that
blasted writers who glorified Russia's peasant past -- a risky
political act that earned Yakovlev exile as Ambassador to Canada
until he returned to Moscow in 1983.

    In a bitter public feud that is a Soviet version of the 19th
century dispute between Westernizers and Slavophiles, the new
Russian nationalists support the notion of derzhava, a strong
state, more than they do individual rights and freedoms. They
denounce Western culture, "neocolonial" business concessions and
attempts to foist a market economy and multiparty democracy on
Russia. "Adopting Western political values and thinking has just
led this country to disaster," explains Nash Sovremennik editor
Stanislav Kunyayev. "The children and grandchildren of the
leftist radicals who put Russia through the meat grinder in
pursuit of socialist happiness want to do the same thing in the
interests of capitalism."

    The ideological porridge of traditional Russian values and
Soviet patriotism has gone down well among members of the
military establishment, already disgruntled by reductions in the
armed forces and the conversion of defense industries to
civilian production. The platform issued by a coalition of ten
"social-patriotic movements" that backed candidates in last
Sunday's elections pointedly denounced efforts to turn the army,
police and KGB into a "scapegoat for failures." Uniformed men
regularly speak at these rallies, often decrying efforts, as
one officer put it, to turn the military "into a prostitute,
used for experiments that win applause in the West."

    Supporters can also be counted among the 25 million Russians
who live in the country's 14 other republics and who complain
bitterly that Moscow has not done enough to protect them against
ethnic violence and discriminatory new laws. At a patriotic
meeting in Leningrad three weeks ago, cries of "Throw out the
government!" greeted a man who had been forced to flee the
Azerbaijan capital of Baku after he described how he and other
Russians were being isolated at special settlements outside
Moscow.

    The Russian nationalists clearly enjoy backing from
Gorbachev's opponents in the bureaucracy. In November, for
example, a new newspaper appeared on sale in the lobby of the
town hall of the Tushinsky district of Moscow. The letters to
the editor were a giveaway: Politburo member Yakovlev was
attacked for turning the Soviet mass media over to the
"pro-Zionist clan." Leningrad has also been the scene of
rightist mischief making. Despite a public outcry over a series
of "Russian Meetings" three weeks ago showcasing nationalist
speakers, the program went ahead as scheduled, with covert
support from the city party committee. Says Vladimir Arro,
chairman of the Leningrad Writers' Union, wryly: "Obviously,
there are bureaucrats friendly to the movement who are concerned
less about the future of Russia than they are about holding on
to their positions."

    Opinion polls suggest that the patriots make up in noise
what they lack in numbers. Leningrad sociologist Leonid Keselman
estimates that about 10% of the city's population of five
million are ardent Russian nationalists. A survey in the Moscow
weekly Argumenty i Fakty put the number of "national patriots"
in the Soviet capital (pop. 19 million) at just 5%. But if
ethnic tensions continue to breed across the country and the
economy declines even further, the emotionally potent idea of
restoring Russia's lost greatness might take hold among a
disillusioned people. If so, it will be a march away from a
shining socialist future toward an equally shimmering -- but no
less illusory -- mirage of the past.