FOUr ESSAYS ON RUSSIA ALEXANDER ZINOVIEV AND THE RUSSIAN trAGEDY 18 BY PHILIP HANSON ILLUSTRATION RAGNI SVENSSON 19 THE REALITY OF POST-COMMUNISM ALEXANDER AND THE ZINOVIEV RUSSIAN TRAGEDY FOUr ESSAYS ON RUSSIA 20 ALEXANDER ZINOVIEV AND THE RUSSIAN trAGEDY 21 wenty years ago I read almost everything Alex- “performance” of all or almost all the world’s countries was when it passed through my brain, my clared a sort of attachment to sovietism. In his earlier dealt with by Soviet methods (RT, pp. 208–11). The de-stalinisers had betrayed Stalin and Stalinism, ander Zinoviev had published. Yawning Heights on “freedom”, “governance”, “ease of doing business”, soul, and my fate, and I will be guided by writings he tore Soviet official claims and Marxism-Len- Between the defeat of the anti-Gorbachev putsch in and the roots of betrayal go further back still. T (Ziyayushchie vysoty) knocked me for six. The “competitiveness” and “transparency”. Implicit in the principle, speak nothing but good of the inist ideology to shreds. In his later writings he treats 1991 and the shelling of the Russian parliament in 1993, rest knocked me for at least five-and-a-half. Those writ- these scoring systems is the notion that we are all play- dead. (RT, pp. 296–7)4 them in just the same way. It is his attitude to soviet Yeltsin presided over the final destruction of the com- Different nations have different propensi- ings altered my way of thinking about Soviet society. I ing the same game: capitalism-and-democracy. Some reality and its prospects that alters. munist order (RT, p. 184). The West had to provoke the ties to betrayal. We, Russians, have this believe they had a similar effect on many people, both play it better than others, and some are really rather Earlier, while still living in Munich, he said that he was His major revisions were of two kinds. First, he 1991 putsch attempt to ensure sovietism was destroyed tendency to quite a strong degree. (R, p. 157) in Russia and abroad. disgracefully bad at it, but one measuring-rod fits all. moved to write Zapad when it became clear that his na- shifted to a somewhat kinder view of Soviet society. (RT, p. 212). Later, when disorder threatened the west- […] The population was an accomplice and Zinoviev’s ideas fascinated a number of historians What did Zinoviev make of this new order? After a tive land (Rodina) had been defeated in the Cold War Second, he amended his projections of the future. And ernisation project in the later 1990s, a change of regime instrument of betrayal or else remained pas- and social scientists, while his writing beguiled many long gap, I have been catching up with his later work: and had “embarked on the path of shameful capitula- all prophets, if they live long enough, have to revise was needed: hence Putin. The individual successor sive (indifferent) towards it. The majority readers, including some (not all) specialists on Russian his post-communist opus. In this paper I will argue that tion […] and the mindless borrowing of western mod- those. could have been someone else; Putin got the job, per- simply did not understand what was going literature. The breadth of his appeal at that time was Alexander Zinoviev’s post-communist writings tell us els” (Z, p. 34). Zinoviev’s intellectual struggles resemble those of haps through an oversight on the part of Washington. on. […] [This was assisted by the fact that] reflected in the roster of contributors to a book that about more than one thinker’s response to a world The motivation is not quite as simple as patriotism, earlier Russian writers, but not, on the whole, very But he was still implementing the westernisation proj- the system of power was so organised that Michael Kirkwood and I edited: Alexander Zinoviev as turned upside down. They also tell us a great deal though that looks to be part of it. Zinoviev also argues closely. There is a pattern of criticism of Russia’s rul- ect (ibid. and p. 215). the masses of the ruled had lost any social or Writer and Thinker.1 Those contributors ranged from about present attitudes in Russia. In particular, they that in Soviet society being Russian and being Soviet ers, followed by exile, followed in turn by criticism of The West forced change on Russia not for the ben- political initiative. (R, pp. 161–2) literary scholars to a member of the German diplomat- illuminate the attitudes of the Putin-era ruling elite. had, for Russians, become inseparable. the West. In this sense, Zinoviev follows the paths of efit of Russians but to destroy a competitor RT( , p. 200). ic service. Zinoviev had, of course, no time for his country’s post- Herzen in the 19th century and Solzhenitsyn in the 20th. Behind this assertion is a theme that is less evident in Zinoviev was a one-man paradox factory. He was not Yawning Heights was by far the best known of the communist rulers. But that does not prevent him from In addition, communism was so organic for What is common to all of them, and also to Nicholas Zinoviev’s earlier writings: social change as an evolu- enamoured of the Soviet system of power. Yet in these early writings. It is set in Ibansk, which somewhat re- inadvertently shining a light on their preoccupations Russia and had so powerfully entered the Berdyaev earlier in the 20th, is a profound attachment tionary process. He argues that societies, states and late writings he mourns its passing and depicts the sembles the Soviet Union. A large part of it consists of and their reflexes. He was thinking what they are think- way of life and psychology of Russians that to something Russian. economies have been developing into hyper-societies, post-soviet social order as grievously limited and with- philosophical and sociological debate among members ing, but more clearly. the destruction of communism was equiva- For Solzhenitsyn and Berdyaev, however, it is cer- hyper-states and hyper-economies (sverkhobshchestva, out the evolutionary potential of its predecessor. of the Ibanskian intelligentsia. They are all either disil- What I have to say is based on Zapad (1995), Velikii lent to the destruction of Russia and of the tainly not communism or sovietism. Berdyaev, who sverkhgosudarstva, etc). The Soviet system was one lusioned or very disillusioned with the Ism, the official evolyutsionniy perelom (1999), Russkaya tragediya Russian people as a historic people. […] In a considered both democracy and Marxism inimical such (VEP, pp. 434–6), and was ahead of the West in POST-SOVIETISM ideology of the state, but are more concerned with un- (2002) and Rasput’e (2005).3 I will begin with a mini- word, they [Western cold warriors] aimed at to personal, spiritual freedom, was concerned with reaching this development (R, pp. 63–4). The West has AND ITS DISCONTENTS derstanding how Ibansk works. In amongst the conver- mally brief summary of Zinoviev’s views on the col- communism but killed Russia. (RT, p. 409) his own version of Orthodox spirituality. It was not a destroyed the Soviet way of life and extended its own sations are passages of exasperated fantasy. Yawning lapse of communism and its aftermath, together with version of Orthodoxy that appealed to the Russian Or- influence around the globe. By doing this, it closes “Post-sovietism”, as Zinoviev calls it, is a hybrid of west- Heights is not much like any other book. The combi- my interpretation of the emotions he reveals about the Many, perhaps most, people on Earth live in countries thodox church authorities before the Revolution, and down the possibility of another, non-western form of ernism, sovietism and national-Russian fundamental- nation of imaginative and philosophical fireworks at subject. Then I will look in more detail at what he has to whose ups and downs cannot, selfish considerations his version of personal freedom did not appeal to the civilisation evolving (VEP, p. 433). That notion, that al- ism (RT, pp. 193–4). The western element is incompat- times recalls Swift or Voltaire, but the resemblances say about the Cold War, the nature of post-sovietism, as aside, be taken too much to heart. To confuse the for- Soviet authorities after the Revolution.5 In being out ternative lines of evolution are cut off, presumably rests ible with the human material, natural conditions and are not close. he calls it, and why westernisation should be resisted. tunes of Britain or Italy or Denmark with the destiny of sympathy with both the old order and the new in on an analogy with the evolution of species in nature: historical traditions of Russia (RT, p. 196). Many commentators hailed Zinoviev’s earlier writ- This leads to some thoughts about arguments of Zino- of the human race would be daft. The fate of Russia, his own country and far from enamoured of any oth- that a new species can evolve only under conditions of ings as anti-Soviet satires. This was not quite right. viev’s that chime with those of certain western writers on the other hand, seems to many Russians to be mo- er existing order, Zinoviev recalls Berdyaev. But he is isolation from what are initially very close relatives. Russia will never, under any circumstances, They were, indeed, full of contempt for the ways in and with anxieties and preoccupations that have been mentous for the world as a whole. That is certainly how completely unlike him in his determined insistence on Zinoviev’s discussions of social evolution into hy- turn into a country resembling, and equiva- which people operated in the Soviet Union.