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The Shadows of False Messiahs Mikhail Agursky and the Relationship Between Russian Nationalism and Zionism from the Brezhnev Era to the Present

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The Shadows of False Messiahs Mikhail Agursky and the Relationship Between Russian Nationalism and Zionism from the Brezhnev Era to the Present The Shadows of False Messiahs Mikhail Agursky and the relationship between Russian nationalism and Zionism from the Brezhnev era to the present MA Thesis in European Studies Graduate School for Humanities Universiteit van Amsterdam Samuel Finkelman 11104473 Main Supervisor: Michael Kemper Second Supervisor: Uladzislau Belavusau July 2016 TABLE OF CONTENTS Acknowledgments and Contact Information, 4 Introduction, 5 An Unlikely Gathering, 5 Chapter One: A Loaded Spring, 7 Chapter Two: Between Two Nationalisms, 9 Chapter Three: A Changing of Signposts, 16 Chapter Four: The Shadows of False Messiahs, 22 Chapter One: A Loaded Spring, 27 1.1 The roots of Agursky’s dissidence, 27 1.2 The Ash of Klaas: Samuil Agursky’s influence on his son, 28 1.3 Mikhail Agursky’s early encounters with anti-Semitism, 33 1.4 Agursky’s encounters with pre-revolutionary Russian culture, 35 1.5 The beginnings of dissent during “the Thaw” years, 37 1.6 Alexander Men’ and Agursky’s involvement with the Church, 38 1.7 Conclusions, 42 Chapter Two: Between Two Nationalisms, 44 2.1 The rise of anti-Semitism, Zionism, dissidence, and Russian nationalism during the early Brezhnev era, 44 2.2 The dawn of dissidence, 48 2.3 Agursky’s review of Yuri Ivanov’s Caution, Zionism! 49 2.4 Agursky’s open letter in the samizdat journal Veche, 54 2.5 Agursky and Solzhenitsyn, 59 2.6 From Under the Rubble, 61 2.7 The Yanov hypothesis and Agursky’s disagreements with Solzhenitsyn, 67 Chapter Three: A Changing of Signposts (1975-1991), 71 3.1 The Russian messianism debate in early 1970s samizdat, 71 3.2 The many meanings of ‘national Bolshevism’, 76 3.3 Agursky’s conception of national Bolshevism, 78 3.4 Agursky’s place in Soviet historiography, 88 3.5 Critiques of Agursky’s conception of national Bolshevism, 91 3.6 The origins and aims of Agursky’s conception of national Bolshevism, 93 3.7 Agursky’s reading of history as a vindication of left wing neo-Slavophile Russian nationalism and Zionism, 95 Chapter Four: The Shadows of False Messiahs, 99 4.1 Introduction, 99 4.2 Agursky’s Nash Sovremennik Zionism Debate with Vadim Kozhinov, 101 4.3 Agursky, Alexander Dugin and the contemporary relationship between Zionism and national Bolshevism, 110 4.4 Messianic tendencies in Agursky’s Zionist writings, 123 4.5 Conclusion: Agursky’s larger view of history and important distinctions between Agursky and Dugin’s messianisms, 136 Conclusion, 139 Bibliography, 144 3 Acknowledgments I would like to thank the following people for the following reasons: my supervisor Michael Kemper for all of his help in formulating the structure and content of this paper and his edits along the way; Erik van Ree for his intellectual guidance; Christian Noack for his help with pragmatic concerns; my second supervisor Uladzislau Belavusau for obliging to read a long thesis; all of my professors at Universiteit van Amsterdam for everything they have taught me this year; and the staff at UvA’s libraries and the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam for helping me access source material. I would also like to thank everyone at the Research Centre for East European Studies at the University of Bremen who showed me such warm hospitality; provided me with a research space; and helped me navigate their vast collection of samizdat, tamizdat, and archival materials, without which this thesis would not have been possible. I owe a particular debt of gratitude to the center’s archivist of Soviet materials, Maria Klassen, who tried to warn me «Нельзя объять необъятное» and to whom this thesis is dedicated. Contact Information Samuel Finkelman Post address: 408 Willowbend Court Hockessin, Delaware 19707 USA +1-302-690-2951 [email protected] Michael Kemper (Supervisor) Office address: Oost-Indisch Huis Kloveniersburgwal 48 Amsterdam Kamernummer: D2.08A Post address: Kloveniersburgwal 48 1012 CX Amsterdam [email protected] 0205254370 020525228 4 Introduction Mikhail Agursky: the White Raven of Soviet Dissidence An Unlikely Gathering On April 5, 1975 a crowd of five hundred artists, intellectuals, and activists gathered in an apartment in the Beliaevo–Bogorodskoe neighborhood of Moscow. Much of the party could be split into two wholly discrepant groups: a faction of ultra-nationalist Russian Orthodox thinkers on the one side; and dozens of Jewish dissidents, refuseniks, and human rights activists on the other. If the guests did not notice the irony themselves, two posters hung in opposite corners of the flat to remind them: one read, “Corner for Jews,” the other, “Corner for anti-Semites.” On that evening, two common denominators united this diverse crowd. The first was their active opposition to the Soviet system. The second was their acquaintance with Mikhail Agursky (1933-1991), who had just been granted permission to emigrate from the Soviet Union to Israel. He was leaving in a matter of days. This unlikely mix of Zionists, Russian nationalists, human rights activists and artists had gathered to see him off.1 As the eclectic crowd present at his goodbye party suggests, the dissident, human rights activist, and historian Mikhail Agursky was something of an anomaly. While most Jews of Agursky’s generation had grown up speaking Russian, and during their younger years they had identified not as Jewish but as Soviet, the increasing hostility of both popular and official attitudes towards the Jews during the late 1960s, alienated many of them from any remaining loyalty to either Soviet socialism or Russian culture. Jews were left with two ideological choices: Western-oriented liberalism or Zionism.2 Especially after the events of the Six Day War and the ensuing campaign of official anti-Zionism in the Soviet press, the latter became the increasingly popular choice. Esther Markish, the daughter of Yiddish-language Soviet poet Perets Markish, recalled in her memoirs: “When the threat of war loomed over Israel, many Russian Jews made the unequivocal choice: ‘Israel is our flesh and blood. Russia is, at best, a distant relative, if not a total stranger.’”3 Agursky, however, rejected this “unequivocal choice.” Notwithstanding his ardent commitment to the Zionist cause and his immigration to Israel in 1975, Agursky never abandoned his Russian identity. He saw nothing incompatible between his Judaism and his Russianness, always seeking cooperation and 1 Mikhail Agursky, Pepel Klaasa: Razryv (Jerusalem 1996), 397. 2 Yuri Slezkine, The Jewish Century (Princeton 2004) 341. 3 Esther Markish, Stol’ dolgoe vozvrashchenie (Tel Aviv 1989), 338. 5 reconciliation between Jews and Russians. In the early 1960s he even converted to Russian Orthodoxy, although he later returned to his native Judaism. Never shying away from an intellectual argument, his works are marked by a sympathetic fascination with right-wing Russian nationalism. His “favorite interlocutors” were anti-Semitic intellectuals, and he eagerly threw himself into polemics on the pages of far-right samizdat journals.4 Publicist Mikhail Bolotovsky explained: “For most Jews, if the word ‘anti-Semite’ was addressed to someone this became sufficient grounds to remove that addressee from the list of people worth shaking hands with. But not for Agursky. ‘Anti-Semite? Why do you say anti-Semite? And in general–is he really an anti-Semite?’ In such a way, one might roughly formulate his approach.”5 Agursky’s sympathy towards right-wing Russian nationalism can be explained by his belief in Russian nationalism’s compatibility with Zionism. For Agursky, Russian nationalism and Zionism shared a common enemy: the atheistic Soviet system that had attempted to extinguish both cultures. What is more, in his eyes, they shared a common goal: national self-preservation. Since Zionism sought to preserve the Jewish nation on a territory far away from Russia, there could be no conflict of interest. Nevertheless, Agursky was painfully aware that much of the nationalist dissident movement did not agree with him regarding the compatibility of the Jewish and Russian national movements. Dismayed by Russian nationalism’s chauvinistic tendencies, Agursky refused to remove himself from Russian culture, as most Zionist activists did. Instead, he tried to persuade ideological opponents that Zionism and Russian nationalism shared common interests, sources and goals. This thesis serves to explore the roots, content, and contemporary relevance of Agursky’s unconventional belief in the potential for cooperation between Zionism and Russian nationalism, two ideologies commonly believed to be anathema to one another. This work does not strive to be a biography in the traditional sense, although it might be classified as an intellectual biography. The arguments of this paper will center on analyses of Agursky’s articles, books, and other writings – not on his life. Nevertheless, certain biographical information is crucial to understanding Agursky’s ideological formation, and the first chapter of this thesis will focus on how early developments in Agursky’s life impacted his later worldview. In the second chapter we will explore Agursky’s dissident activity and the development of the Jewish Question in his samizdat writings 4 Mikhail Bolotovsky, “Agursky i Rossiia: Istoriia pechal’nykh sovpadenii,” Polit.ru (date of publication not provided) accessed at http://www.zhurnal.ru/polit/articles.html?agursky 5 Ibid. 6 from the mid 1970s. We will pay particular attention to his grounds for belief in future Russian-Zionist cooperation and the utopian program he advanced in Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s collection From Under the Rubble [Iz pod glyb]. In the third chapter, we will look at Agursky’s work as a historian in Israel and investigate the conception of ‘national Bolshevism’ he advanced in his two major historical works: his 1980 Russian-language Ideologiia natsional-bolshevizma and his 1987 English-language adaptation of that work, The Third Rome: National Bolshevism in the USSR. In the final chapter we will explore the contemporary relevance and implications of both Agursky’s ‘national Bolshevik’ reading of Soviet history and his belief in the ideological compatibility of Zionism and Russian nationalism.
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