Reviving Russian Nationalism

...As is customary in the Soviet Union, it was written on a slip of paper and passed to him...

...In others il is specifically Russian, whether cultural or political...

...hostility toward Soviet collectivized agriculture...

...I he complex, frequently contradictory feelings inspired by this resurgence of "Russianness" have produced a variety of attitudes...

...It views Nicholas as weak, well-intentioned and brought down by Russia's enemies...

...The Tsarist government had its faults, the book suggests, yet it was Russian...

...Similarly, at a meeting of the scholars of the Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow, plans were discussed for an anthology of critical studies of Soviet authors between 1917 and World War II...

...they are more nearly Rousseauists than Russo-philes...

...The attachment of some Russians to Mother Russia can produce some amusing results...

...A leading spokesman for the Russophile wing, Pyotr Palievsky, stated that if a chapter were to be devoted to Osip Mandelstam, as proposed, he would withdraw from the project...

...Each year since 1968...

...The Soviet Union is being inundated with stories, plays, novels, and films about the glories of the countryside...

...The heros are inevitably folksy old-timers, cither peasants (collective farm workers, rural carpenters, truck drivers), or people who grew up in the country and then moved to town-the life history of millions of citizens...

...exaltation of Russian Orthodox religious thought or 19th-century Slavophile ideas...

...The characters often speak colorful regional dialects, and the trappings of Old Russia are lovingly depicted: broken down Orthodox churches, icons, birch trees, folk songs, proverbs...

...1 also heard various political anecdotes based on the presumption of future Chinese world domination...

...At the same lime, however, opponents have arisen to challenge the yearnings for the ancient...

...After all, most Russians live in cities, while state farms, collective farms and other modern Soviet institutions have replaced the old villages...

...Like nature, it is argued, the peasant knew no justice, no fairness...

...Perspectives REVIVING RUSSIAN NATIONALISM by george gibian The main locus of Soviet intellectual life today, I found during my recent sixth visit to the USSR, is neither (he West not internal modernization, but the past -russia's national heritage...

...He read it aloud-possibly before he was aware of its contents: Had Palievsky meant to say that alien Jewish elements like Mandelstam had no place in Soviet literary life...

...Implicit in what many whom I talked to said was that if one had to pick out the most salient feature of the current climate of Soviet opinion, it would be strong Russian national feeling...

...The forerunner and si ill dominant literary expression of this nostalgia is "Village" or "Country" prose...

...Soviet intellectuals balk at the word "nationalism," preferring "love of national traditions," or "Russian patriotism," or, most often, "love of the real Russia and of the Russian people...

...Indeed, the fear of China sometimes becomes crude and racist...

...by the new urban technological society...

...Trifonov writes about our life with a cold heart," he said, and called him a pessimist who disregards all that gives hope for the future...

...These critics stress the importance of contemporary, urban problems and point out the sentimentality of the rural enthusiasts...

...literature, it is said, will eventually bow to the reality...

...They say that the 18th-century predecessors of today's ruralists-Authors such as Gleb Uspensky-Also focused on the peasant and his oneness with "nature," but at least deplored some of the consequences of his separation from culture or civilization...

...He was shown through the whole oversized quarters...

...Since the Russian word narod means both "people" and "nation," the last formulation, conveniently ambiguous, is the one most widely accepted...

...I heard an energetic young critic speak derisively of the well-known novelist Yuri Trifonov...

...But, in fact, the tural craze has only increased each year And now a whole ideological intra structure is growing up around these films, plays, stones and poems, with critics, and journalists supplying the rationale for this new Russophile culture...

...The "Villagers," their critics object, idealize the peasant and nature...

...The explanation for this astonishing sight was that the previous tenant had been Soviet Minister of Defense Dmitri Ustinov, whose peasant mother still lives on a remote collective farm and would not visit him unless he had the kind of old-lime country stove she was accustomed to...

...and "Don't you know the Chinese will one day turn on you...

...His Russianness wins him sympathies that Lenin would have found difficult to stomach...

...The strong feeling for Russia occasionally carries over into attacks on those contemporary authors who are not Russophiles and who dissect the negative sides of Soviet history...

...It was my impression that a war against China would be popular with, and supported by, the vast majority of the Russian population of the Soviet Union...

...During the discussion period, a question from the floor was addressed to Palievsky...

...anti-Semitism and other xenophobia...

...Russians are convinced that they helped China generously after World War II, and then were themselves betrayed by it...

...and 2) the superior virtue and purer "Russianness" of rural inhabitants...

...Another novel, Valentin Pikul's The Last Line, about Rasputin, has an equally curious interpretation of pre-1917 events...

...Mandelstam, a difficult poet of the 1920s and '30s, and perhaps the greatest Russian poet of the century, perished in a Stalinist labor camp...

...Its downfall was brought about by Freemasons and other anti-Russian elements-often represented by characters with Jewish names-in the first, February 1917 Revolution...

...plus a broad range of partly nationalistic, partly nostalgic views...

...But then came the Bolshevik Revolution of October 1917, which removed the alien regime of Kerensky, an event presented as a Russian and cleansing force, rather than a Marxist or proletarian one...

...George Gibian, a past contributor, teaches Russian Literature at Council...

...nature knows only force," one Soviet intellectual told me...

...In still others it is a strange amalgam (or confusion) of Russian and Soviet...

...when Village prose made its debut, observers have predicted that it would soon run us course...

...Lipservice continues to be paid to it in schools and in the media, but it is no longer a living force...

...On all sides, I encountered the questions: "Do Carter and the United States know what they are doing, being friendly with such a treacherous country as China...

...So Ustinov ordered a search for one and had it installed in his Moscow apartment...

...But it was the immense kitchen that struck him most: One entire wall was taken up by a huge traditional Russian peasant stove covered with beautiful old-fashioned tiles, with recesses to sit or lie on, and many ovens...

...Of all the manifestations of Russian national sentiment I saw on my trip, the clearest was the fear and dislike of China...

...This is a feeling that one finds equally among the average citizen, dissidents and official intellectuals...

...In sonic instances the mood is reminiscent of our own yearnings to return to the simple life of pre-industrial America...

...One of them, set in the future, has Carter and Brezhnev sitting at a table, chatting...

...I he themes of works by such writers as Abtainov, Helov and Sluikshiu are I) the destruction of Russian villages and their ancient, rustic ways of living...

...This is not surprising, for it is based on a Russian image of a billion ant-like disciplined Chinese, working away tirelessly, in contrast to the Russians' own lackadaisical work habits...

...Thus support for the Soviet Union's foreign policy and pride in the country's position as a world power may go hand in hand with bitterness against the Soviet regime for having destroyed ancient Russian churches, old villages, and the peasantry with its specifically Russian outlook and way of life...

...Passion for ancient Russia can override even ideological considerations, such as Bolshevik hostility to the Tsarist regime...

...A friend in Moscow told me he once visited someone who had just been allotted a part of what previously had been a huge, double apartment...

...After a while, a Chinese man appears and says, sharply: "All right, the visit is over, back to your cells...

...I was frequently told that Marxist ideology is dead in the Soviet Union...

...For instance, Twenty-Six Steps Downward, an historical novel about the 26-year reign of Nicholas II, presents the thesis that the decline of the Tsar's rule was due mainly to foreigners, especially Germans and Jews...

...His works have been "rehabilitated" and republished in the Soviet Union, but his official standing still hangs in the balance...