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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Suicide of Integration, or Russian Ideology as Antisystem

23 March, 1999 - 00:00

"Ethnic antisystem: a system community made up of people harboring negative
world outlooks."

 Lev GUMILIOV,

 Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of Earth

Against the backdrop of all the "historic" resolutions being passed
by the Ukrainian Parliament, concerning Ukraine's accession to the CIS
Interparliamentary Assembly and the growing political hubbub about the
need to restore that "brotherly union of Slavic peoples" the very object
of accession looks a bit strange. Now it declares an internal war and then
does not want to ratify the treaty recognizing the existing "brotherly
people."

People, even those not really in the mood for integration, are aware
of this strangeness and react appropriately. In the course of a poll carried
out by the Socio Market Service in November 1998 involving 400 residents
of Dnipropetrovsk (not the most nationalistic region of Ukraine) 45% of
the respondents stated that they would say a resolute yes even now to the
question of referendum confirming the Act of National Independence.

Let us take a closer look at Russia and understand what this intuitively
perceived strangeness is all about. It seems somehow strange to even address
Lev Gumiliov for arguments against the revival of this union, because he
considered such "reunification" correct with the Russians allowing the
Ukrainians (naturally those who forfeited their mother tongue, culture,
and national identity) to serve as sergeants in the Russian army. However,
in my opinion, one of Gumiliov's concepts can well serve today as an illustration
of why Ukraine has nowhere to get integrated.

According to Gumiliov, antisystem primarily means an ideology based
on the principle of negation of life and apology of death. As a "classical"
version of antisystem Gumiliov offers Manichaeism, which held the world
was created by the Satan and so every adherent must die, taking with him
as many fellow countrymen as he can (especially totally unsuspecting ones,
meaning that they are servants of the Satan). In his opinion, the appearance
of an antisystem means the beginning of the senility of the ethnos, its
transition to the phase of fracture. Paraphrasing Goya, it is a "downfall
of passionateness in the course of intersuperethnic contacts, begetting
monsters."

Even a most superficial analysis allows one to discern strong anti-Semitic
roots in practically every ideological trend of current Russia. Some of
these ideologies are actually antisystems being more dangerous many times
over that Manichaeism (the Manichaeans, for objective reasons, had no access
to nuclear weapons). Compared to Ukraine, where only one full-fledged antisystem
was born, the White Brotherhood, Russia looks like a real evil empire.
Let us now make a small digression into the basic ideological trends of
today's Russia.

Different variations of the national patriotic ideology: The
groundwork of these ideologies is originally composed of the principle
outwardly hostile interference - "Judeo-Masonic capital" and "Zionist-US
imperialism" aiming to uproot all people on earth, especially the Russians.
And only "Russian knights" can stand in their way, chopping off the "Hydra's
venom-spitting heads" and "crushing all those disgusting rats." True, although
no one has put it in so many words, such "knights" have only one actual
prospect: a hero's death. Ghosts cannot be defeated because:

(1) They can never be defeated in principle. They have been in existence
since the origin of humanity, and they have always gotten the better of
all the other peoples. The theme of the fall of the Egyptian, Mesopotamian,
and Roman civilizations as a result of such Judeo-Masonic plots has not
only mere historical relevance. There are versions that Hitler was created
by those Freemasons, and that US NSC Memorandum #20/1 is still effective,
meaning, in all probability, that the latter document's planned nuclear
war has already taken place and the Russians have just failed to notice.

(2) Russians are stupid. Such statements by Russian "patriots" are anything
but rare. Krasnodar Governor Kondratenko reduces all his Federation Council
appearances to this. Russia's soils are not fertile because the Russians
are fools, hence no contacts with the West should be allowed to be expanded,
because Russia will never win the competition. A statement clear enough,
even if not expressed in so many words.

(3) The Russians have never been at the helm of their country. Russia
has always been headed by either Jews and Freemasons systematically destroying
the Russian people or by the khokhly (a less than fond label for
Ukrainians) who have always suppressed and robbed the Russians in every
possible way (this theory seems especially popular these days). In this
context Boris Yeltsin is presented as a case study in such Judeo-Masonic
leadership.

Against this backdrop all those necrophiliac gestures by all those "patriots"
do not look surprising - e.g., Volodymyr Zhirinovsky constantly cursing
that "anti-people regime," blaming it for a genocide now going full speed
ahead in Russia - he believes that the populace is getting one million
smaller each year; at the same time he counts how many millions of Russian
lads he will place in the way of Pakistani and US tanks in the course of
the "final southern thrust" and how many would have to die storming Vilnius.
This "anti-people regime" is so very bad apparently because it can destroy
only a million people a year for no apparent cause, whereas Mr. Zhirinovsky
promises to destroy about ten million for a "good cause."

Or take moderate patriotism. It presents no better picture. Consider,
for example, Russian scholar A. Panarin's The Revenge of History: Russian
Strategic Initiative in the Twenty-First Century. The whole thing is
based on debating Francis Fukuyama's The End of History. Pretending
to be scholarly (which it is not), this work offers quite a number of extremely
interesting ideas and assumptions. However some are elucidated in a manner
worth dwelling upon: Russia is portrayed as today's only surviving Orthodox
kingdom; it is alone in this world; the democrats are assumed to have doomed
it to worldwide solitude (??); the Russians' major ethical asset is their
compassionate (read: in principle inactive) love; the fiasco of all reforms
in Russia means the defeat of Western ideology (!?); Russia's return to
Europe is possible only in the form of confrontation with the rest of the
world (Panarin is against this: such confrontation should aimed only at
the West, while every effort should be made to befriend China and the Islamic
world); Russia has never been an empire, because residents of Eurasia mastered
a system of coexistence based on superethnic and interconfessional universalities;
Russia has outgrown such an archaic form of state formation as empire with
its forcible methods of administration (??). Continuing the list of such
inanities makes no sense. The general idea is clear: Russia is good and
everybody else is very bad. And if all those other bad guys refuse to cooperate
to get any better, the only logical outcome is a total war, but only against
"foreign countries in the immediate area." All the rest, in Mr. Panarin's
opinion, should be made friends. One thing is not clear: why have enemies
if you have such powerful friends?

Leftist ideology in Russia is an extremely complex phenomenon.
A certain leftist stratum is partially opposed to the existing regime (e.g.,
Gennady Ziuganov), another one has conveniently integrated into the National
Patriotic ranks (e.g., Albert Makashov), and the third has worked out its
own anti-Semitic antisystem ideology, mostly composed of the rising generation
tending toward the Komsomol newspaper Bumbarash-2017. The key idea
of the Russian New Left can be summed up as "Kill the bourgeois and die!"
(the latter part of this motto seems to be implemented by some of the Left
pretty effectively, using drugs). Thanatotic attitudes among young Russians
are acquiring a threatening scope. Antisystem underground rock has long
been effectively competing against all the other pop trends. Below are
a couple of lines from today's Russian superstar A. Nepomniashchy:

"Set ablaze that kiosk selling US shit! Throw bricks at the windows
of that hard-currency grocery store! Put a hand grenade under their cute
Chevrolet! Draw a hammer and sickle on their posters! Kill all who love
the Yankees!"

And this is what another well-known Russian political hooligan, A. Tsvetkov,
thinks: "All that scum who chose their short-lived political course are
not worth being allowed to live. Communism is inevitable. But you are not
likely to survive under Communism. A world of people wearing masks is beautiful.
No one can guarantee that no one else will bash in his head with a crowbar,
yet no one can be forbidden to use that crowbar." It is not surprising
that the young people taking part in the 1994 and 1995 Moscow student riots
demanded not work and study, but an opportunity to "overthrow the anti-people
regime."

Even the liberal democratic concepts in Russia's mass conscience gradually
acquire antisystem features. The Leftist Italian journalist Della Ciesa,
author of a rather naive book called Good-bye Russia! provides an
interesting dialogue with Russian liberal intellectuals. To his story about
the horrible life of the Russian homeless they reply indignantly that all
who cannot get adjusted to the existing regime (which they believe liberal)
should be allowed to die out like the dinosaurs. The reader is left with
the impression that Russian reforms were futile not because they were poorly
designed, but because those working them out lacked something in moral
terms. It is hard to build a solid structure when the project efficiency
criteria is that of exactly how many workers got killed building it.

In the above context the Russian Duma's stubborn resistance to nuclear
disarmament looks not so much like political irresponsibility as inner
conviction. Indeed, destroying "evil" (USA, Israel, and the West in general)
by expending the "hero's" life (Russia and the rest of the world) is supposed
to be the ultimate triumph worth every sacrifice. This scenario does not
read too convincingly today, but it is an open secret that all such "sacrificing
patriots" will win the next elections in Russia. If and when they do, all
such "marginal" concepts will stand a fair chance of being accepted officially.

Next to Russia, being on the critical list economically and politically,
Ukraine looks almost as fit as a fiddle. Anyway, its most powerful antisystem
is that demanding immediate reunification with Russia, being well aware
that Russia would never forgive the Ukrainians (even those in the Crimea)
for what they did on December 1, 1991. Even if mass revenge is not taken
for some reasons, should we sell out our youth in return for some mythical
well-being and the actual senility of the geriatric empire still holding
on?

 

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