The fate of the Russian idea

Abstract

It is not the task of this essay to engage in a polemic with the so-called 'nationalist' faction of the Russian opposition, which is represented, in particular, by the letters and speeches of Alexander Solzhenitsyn and by what is generally recognized as that faction's manifesto - the samizdat collection From Under the Rubble. I feel only admiration for its authors, for they have dared throw down a last desperate challenge to the Soviet regime's overwhelmingly oppressive police power. There cannot be the slightest doubt as to the purity and sincerity of their intentions. However, I do doubt something else. Are they really following the very principle which they themselves have proclaimed so solemnly and which this essay's epigraph expresses? Are they aware that everything they now declare to the modern world as the latest word on salvation was declared in Russia a century ago? Not only was it declared, but it underwent, with Russia's history of reform, an instructive ideological evolution. It was actually tested in the crucible of a great historical experiment- and it ended in a terrible ideological catastrophe. Is it correct, is it reasonable to deprive oneself of all historical memory when that is precisely what almost every page of their manifesto clamors and yearns for? Is it reasonable to act as if Russia's tragedy began only in 1917? Can one allow oneself simply to forget the history of one's own ideological forefathers?