"LADY AND THE TRAMP"

When Democracy Is A Terrible Choice.
(Kerensky stops Kornilov, but allows… Lenin.)
…Having saved Lenin’s skin in the last entry, Kerensky was not done yet with his run of historical blunders. His next blunder was to personally hand power to the man whom he had just declared a traitor to Russia, on a silver platter.
In July 1917, after a series of disastrous defeats of the Russian army on the fields of The Great War (as the First World War had been called before there was a Second), Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky chose to appoint as the commander-in-chief of the Russian Army a great Russian patriot and a military commander of genius General Lavr Kornilov. Charged with the mission of defending Russia from her enemies, General Kornilov saw his main task in restoring the collapsed law and order in Russia’s capital of Peterburg and in suppressing the mischief-making Bolsheviks, who, as he correctly judged, were sabotaging the Russian war effort and aggravating the chaos which had engulfed the nation ever since Tsar Nicholas II had signed his abdication.
Consequently, Kornilov summoned a body of troops and began his march on the Russian capital, which was immediately interpreted by the poor democrat Mr. Kerensky as a coup d’état in progress. Realizing his own powerlessness under the circumstances, but determined to stop this threat to Russian democracy at any cost, Kerensky made the fatal decision of appealing to his enemies the Bolsheviks for help, and, furthermore, he allowed the Bolsheviks to arm their cohorts of factory workers and mischievous troublemakers to the teeth, so that they would be able to stop the Kornilov mutiny!!! In the meantime, he issued an order for Kornilov’s arrest, and General Kornilov was indeed arrested and imprisoned, as he was, in turn, betrayed by his noble-born army generals, who had long been filled with resentment for this commoner, born of a Cossack father and a peasant Tatar mother. Taking orders from him used to be marginally tolerable for them, when he was himself under orders from the Imperial Russian government, but to support him as a renegade officer turned rebel was totally out of the question. (The rest of the Kornilov story is rather sad. Escaping from his prison, he was just about ready to fight the Bolsheviks at the head of the White movement, as his former detractors found out to their horror that it had been their refusal to support Kornilov, that had allowed the Bolsheviks to take power in Russia in the first place, and now greeted Kornilov back as their natural leader and a savior of Russia, when a single grenade thrown into his living quarters in early 1918 was enough to end his life.)
…And as for Kerensky, how many horrific nightmares must he have suffered throughout the rest of his long and unimaginably tragic life as a humbled refugee in exile abroad, all amounting to the same heart-rending scream, to this effect: What have I done, with my own hand stopping the only man who could save Russia from the Bolshevik menace, while with my other hand delivering the power to depose both me and my dear Russian democracy to my worst enemies?!
The rest of the Kerensky story is rather predictable, but sad, nevertheless. He fled the Bolshevik Revolution and settled in Paris, where he wrote three books with loud titles, but disingenuously uninformative contents. (The Prelude to Bolshevism, 1919; The Catastrophe, 1927; and the Crucifixion of Liberty, 1934.) Too bad that he was not forthcoming in any of them, and never told the real story. (Although, perhaps, his publishers would have turned him down, in case he had?) After Nazi Germany had occupied France, he moved to the United States, where, with a short exception, he was to spend the rest of his life. (His 1965 American book, Russia and History’s Turning Point, was no less disingenuous than the three previous ones.) After he died, in 1970, the Russian Orthodox Church in America (unaffiliated with the Russian Orthodox Church in the USSR, of course) refused to give him burial (blaming him personally for the Bolshevik Revolution), and his body was finally transferred to London, where it was buried in a non-denominational cemetery…
…But now that Kerensky is long dead, let him rest in peace. It is true that he had made a terrible “choice,” by choosing democracy over dictatorship. But it wasn’t really Kerensky, of course, who had handed to the Bolsheviks the power over Russia. In fact, at no time did Kerensky have such power in his hands, to begin with. It was our old friend, la forza del destino, all along!

David Among Goliaths.
In that strange year 1917 there were three major political parties in Russia, although some would say four, and if you have ventured your guess about the fourth, you were probably wrong.
One of these was the KD, or Kah-Deh, commonly known as the Cadets, an acronym for the Constitutional Democrats, the party that had so much shocked the Tsarist Russian Government back in 1905 when it had won national prominence by its domination of the first Duma, that fledgling Russian Parliament. In 1917, however, it was seen by others as the right wing of Russian politics, and many had gone so far as to brand the Cadets, quite unfairly, as the downright reactionaries, representing the outdated legacy of Tsarism. The Cadets mostly consisted of liberal Russian nobility and British-style-democracy-loving intellectuals. They talked a lot, but had no understanding of where Russia was going, nor how to play hardball politics, either. None of them were monarchists however, as the latter, although numerous, were disinclined to engage in the democratic process, and did not form a party of their own.
The second large party, to the left of the Cadets, but only slightly to the left, comparatively speaking, were the SD, Social Democrats, whom Western historians have astonishingly labeled as Mensheviks, following Lenin’s false cue, and the subsequent Soviet Propaganda. Lenin, of course, had used this word derogatorily, but the West has accepted it with a straight face. It would have been much fairer and more sensible to call them Social Democrats, the term well familiar to all Europe, and signifying essentially the same thing.
The third, and most populous party, by far, were the SR, Socialist Revolutionaries, still farther to the left. It was their extreme left wing, the Left SR, who were the bona fide heirs of Nechayev, the notorious nihilists, Russia’s professional terrorists and trouble-makers, on a scale much greater than the Bolsheviks, because of their huge numbers across Russia, who were often referred to as the fourth party, certainly deserving such honor, on account of being quite distinctive in their activity, and also far more numerous than all the other parties put together.
Then, there was the Trudovik Party, claiming to represent Russia’s labor force. It was, however, too small to account for anything, even though Kerensky himself had chosen to belong to it for a while, in the course of his notoriously habitual party-switching.
Where does all of this leave the Bolsheviks?, one may ask. The Bolsheviks were indeed a ridiculously tiny bunch, and they were not even considered a party by most, but as some rabid inflamed appendix inside the body of the SD. And yet at the end this minuscule David would make a short shrift of all those Goliaths and end up not even as a “first among many,” but, literally, as “the one and only.” How could such a thing at all become possible?
Democracy was a new thing to Russia, a rara exotic avis, brought in from overseas, which nobody seemed to know how to handle, except for the Bolsheviks, who knew only too well how to mishandle it.
The Cadets and the SD were both fairly respectable, and would have thrived in a British-style democracy, had such a thing been possible in Russia. Well, it was not, as the events did not tarry to prove.
The SR were mainly passionately dedicated, but undisciplined anarchists, who knew how to do their job of throwing bombs and shooting guns at close range, but had no political skills whatsoever. It was, therefore, up to the Bolsheviks to prove the overwhelming advantage of Lenin’s Party Principle (I am tempted to call it the ParteiPrinzip) over the vastly superior numbers of everybody else, no matter how much respect and/or popularity those others were capable of mustering for their claim to power in Russia.
The Bolsheviks understood how it was possible for a handful of aggressive agitators to sway large crowds, using the Archimedes’ lever technique, that is, by finding a clever fulcrum, such as, in their case, was their populist slogan “land to the peasants, peace to the nations, bread to the hungry” (none of which promises they intended to keep, at least, in the short run). Cheap demagoguery, vicious invective, intimidation, and direct terrorization of their political opponents and of all who might find themselves in their way--- all these tactics turned out to be immensely effective against their pathetically ineffectual competition, but the most effective of all was their unscrupulous Wille zur Macht, an overpowering sense of purpose and unflinching readiness for immediate and extremely radical action.
They broke their word just as easily as they gave it. They refined the Divide et Impera rule to perfection. It was their time to take Russia by a perfect storm, and they were handily up to the task.
Still, there have been few such total miracles in the history of the world, and, under normal circumstances, Lenin’s crowd would not have stood a chance, but these were not normal circumstances. There was no law and no order in the land, and while for, say, the SR, it was no more, and no less than business as usual, the Bolsheviks saw this anarchy and lawlessness not as a purpose achieved, but as their unique and unequaled opportunity to take the next radical step, saying, We are the new law, and we are the new order, and there was no one else out there to call their bluff.

Bolshevism As A Necessity.
Was Bolshevism an aberration in Russian history or a world-historical necessity? I think that this question has already been answered in ample quantities in favor of the latter, and the hand of destiny has been traced throughout that period of Russian history with a sufficient consistency to eschew all doubt.
There are a few points remaining to be made in that direction, however, and this is precisely what I intend to do in this entry.
Official Soviet accounts used to give a picture of the Bolshevik Revolution as a triumphant armed uprising in which Lenin’s revolutionary cohorts literally wrestled power in Russia from the reactionary Provisional Government. This picture has long been discredited, but its equally false alternative has survived without a challenge. Regrettably so, as this alternative picture has done more historical harm than the fairly harmless erstwhile hagiography half-heartedly provided by the Soviet government historians.
The alternative picture receives its first draft courtesy of the liberal constituency of the Russian Provisional Government of 1917, which managed to find its way out of Soviet Russia during those dangerous years, and ended up in European and/or American emigration. Their account was at first falling on deaf ears, but later, when a preoccupation with freedom and democracy had taken root, particularly in post cold-war America, it started to ring like sweet music in the ears of the liberationist-democratizationist ideologues.
The original wishful-thinking Russian liberals liked to view the period between the abdication of the Czar in March 1917 and the subsequent Bolshevik takeover, seven months later, as an authentic democratic episode in Russian history, cut short by the vandals. Ironically, both the Soviet official view and this one too, tended to imply that Russia’s Provisional Government, Kerensky and all, had indeed held political power in Russia, even if for a brief period of time.
This was not however how it was in reality, according to my sources, historians and eyewitnesses, regarding the role of the Provisional Government in Russian history. In their analysis, the one, which I both trust and agree with professionally, there was just an illusion of power held by the Provisional Government primarily in the Russian capital, but they insist that there was no legitimate authority in the land ever since the fall of the Romanov monarchy, precipitated by the abdication of the Emperor Nicholas II and the terrified refusal by Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich to pick up the broken pieces.
There remained of course the regular units of the Russian army, halfheartedly fighting the Germans and the Austrians on the fronts of the Great War, gradually beginning to realize the significance of having lost their Commander in Chief. As a result, insubordination and mass desertion were becoming daily occurrences. Of course, there were also other units, in reserve, sullenly waiting for orders from their direct superiors, whom they were now ready to massacre at the first opportunity.
But otherwise, the country was literally falling apart, and the new, unruly “administrative councils,” called the Soviets, only contributed to the general anarchy, with their ugly squabbles, bloody fist fights, and loud mutual denunciations.
The virtual demise of Russia in 1917 was a very poignant obsession among my Russian-nationalist friends, all united in the need for a satisfactory rationalization, and all agreeing in their acceptance of the Bolshevik Revolution as a necessity, rather than an aberration in Russia’s historical course. (This never prevent them, of course, from being acerbic grumbling critics of all too many aspects of the Soviet regime.)
With this view of the Bolshevik political triumph as a necessity, I could not agree more. Not only were the Bolsheviks brilliant in their own right, at playing the political game, but sheer good luck seemed to be with them every step of the way. For better or for worse, Lady History was definitely on their side, making their triumph even more a historical necessity than anything that human cleverness alone could deliver. For she is always on the side of historical necessity, and one cannot go wrong about that.

Interfering With The Enemy Destroying Himself.
His incredible luck notwithstanding, Lenin’s daring power grab was immediately challenged, and a bloody Civil War ensued, with terrible atrocities committed by both the Reds and the Whites. Surrounded from all sides within a relatively small enclave, which however had in it Russia’s both principal cities: Petrograd and Moscow, the Bolsheviks promptly moved their capital from the former to the latter site thereby fulfilling the cherished dream of all Russian ultra-nationalists, even if their ostensible reason for it was not what the latter had in mind, but the fear that Petrograd could be falling into enemy hands.
But there was no coordination among the vastly superior anti-Bolshevik (White) forces, nor a commonness of purpose. Some were seeking the restoration of the monarchy. Others were vehemently opposed to it, but mostly wanted to rid Russia of the Bolshevik usurpers of power. Kerensky was practically the only one left who was trying to have his Prime Minister’s job back, but momentarily joining forces with the Cossacks of General Krasnov, he quickly discovered that his helpers had no interest in his return, and their reluctance to assist the man they did not want soured their own effort, which then fizzled out. Thus saved by yet another stroke of good fortune, the Bolsheviks were, however, far from being out of the woods, as the odds against them were still overwhelming.
In the meantime, the Bolsheviks signed, as promised, a separate peace with Germany, and promptly found Russia’s former allies, the Entente Powers, on the other side of the fence. It was then that Lenin seemed to have found yet another deadly gambit (one is tempted to call it a “Russian Roulette with a purpose”), which would once again allow him to beat the odds.
Historians writing about the so-called mutiny of the Czechoslovak corps, which started in March 1918, have somehow overlooked the clearly manufactured nature of their revolt. Having just signed the infamous Brest-Litovsk peace treaty with Germany, the Bolsheviks were required by that treaty to release all enemy soldiers kept as prisoners of war inside Russia, and to have them transported by rail to their appropriate destinations. In the course of this release, a violent confrontation took place between the Czechs and the Hungarians, the former having been disarmed by the Bolshevik authorities, while the latter were not. As a result, the Czechs took offence and revolted, quickly finding themselves enough weapons to become armed to the teeth.
There were several apparent inconsistencies and absurdities in how that risky situation had been created. I do not have in my possession the smoking gun as to what really happened there, but from what I know, and from Lenin’s wild delight on receiving the otherwise dreadful news that foreign troops were now fighting against the Russians on Russian soil (presumably, aiding the White movement, in the expectation that, once the Bolsheviks had been defeated, Russia would be going back into the war against their common enemy), one could easily surmise that the Czech mutiny may indeed have been provoked for that very reason. Either that, or that Lady History, once again on the side of historical necessity, had confounded the Bolsheviks into making that strangely absurd, but, ultimately, their best winning move.
Napoleon wisely observed, “You must not interfere with your enemy when he is in the process of destroying himself.” His guideline was shockingly disregarded in this case by the Entente Powers, who one might think should have known better, counting the French among their ranks; and indeed, had they not interfered in the Russian civil war, the Bolshevik victory in it might not have been so complete, and so decisive. But as soon as foreigners had landed on Russian soil, for most patriotic Russian officers of the White movement, it was no longer a question of some usurpers snatching power in the Russian capital. It was every Russian’s sacred duty to resist and repel a foreign invasion and, in the process, support and obey even the most reprehensible national authority, as long as it was their native, as opposed to foreign, authority.
The national opposition to the Entente invasion of Russia did not stop the civil war right away, but, by and large, it certainly determined its outcome. A closer look at the details of the civil war’s history reveals that in all instances where the White movement was the strongest and might have achieved a victory or at least a reasonable standoff against the Reds, the foreign intervention factor would then dramatically interfere in the situation on the ground and virtually tie the hands of the Russian White commanders, be it Admiral Kolchak or Generals Yudenich, Denikin or Wrangel, depriving them all of an otherwise possible propitious outcome. Curiously, as just a single example, modern Russian historical analysis has established that in the interaction between Kolchak and the Entente commanders, which was quite reluctant on Kolchak’s part, to begin with, the foreigners wished to secure the gold and treasures in the Admiral’s possession, but were firmly rebuffed, and to show their extreme disappointment with the stubborn White Russian commander, they, in effect, delivered him into the hands of the Bolsheviks, to be swiftly tried and predictably executed.

LENIN'S PROGRESS

Comrade Nicholas.
Historians are familiar with the fact that the Russian secret police Okhrana was very fond of infiltrating all sorts of political movements and organizations, as a means of keeping Russian political life under control. Some of the worst acts of political violence were directly committed or treacherously provoked by Czarist government agents. The name of Yevno Fishelevich Azef, Russia’s one-time terrorist-in-chief, and also the notorious police agent of note, is by no means the only one that comes to mind. Roman Malinovsky, leader of the Bolshevik faction in the Russian Parliament Duma was yet another Okhrana stooge. The police were always on the prowl for valuable recruits, and their recruitment techniques were constantly diversified and refined.
After the hanging of Alexander Ulyanov, they (naturally) started looking very closely at the Ulyanov family. Can you find a better undercover agent than a close relative of a revolutionary martyr? Vladimir filled the bill very nicely. Age 17, on the doorstep of college, very ambitious, and very vulnerable. The circumstances of his recruitment and all of his subsequent relationship with the police were dutifully recorded in his police file, which in 1917 fell into the hands of the Provisional Government of Russia, formed after the abolition of the monarchy. Incredibly, it was Prime Minister Kerensky’s decision not to use this explosive file against Lenin during the shaky interregnum of 1917, for reasons I will reveal in a later entry… After the Bolsheviks came to power, the file was destroyed.
And so, the young Vladimir Ulyanov was approached by the secret police, and immediately proved that he had the stuff to go far, by picking up the challenge.
Coming out of high school, the brooding boy was facing the dilemma of how to channel his colossal natural drive. Because of the scandal surrounding his family after Alexander Ulyanov’s execution, saying no to the police effectively meant saying no to college. And, of course, without college there could be no meaningful life for an aspiring young intellectual. The police made him an offer he could not refuse.
Vladimir would never regret his decision. Surely he was being used! But in this relationship he was certain to come out the much greater user. They wanted him to be a revolutionary? Splendid! Such a career was the dream of every young man, and with the help of the secret police, he would not have to start from scratch, working his way up through the ranks. His brother’s name would be of help at the bottom, of course: those senior revolutionaries would just love to patronize a dead legend’s kid brother. But Vladimir’s desire was not to be patted on the head, but to go all the way straight to the top, and it was pretty crowded and ugly up there. To get to the top, he would be helped by the Okhrana infinitely more than by a dead brother!
…That very fall of 1887 he entered the University of Kazan, in a breeze, to study law. Soon thereafter, he was to receive his first police assignment, which must have filled him with delight: he was to join a radical student group at the University, as an agent provocateur, to use this lovely French expression; to participate in a student disturbance; and to be summarily expelled, in order to accumulate the necessary trustworthiness among the revolutionaries for his future assignments. Who could ask for anything better?! Without risking anything, he would be getting his first personal war decoration, and end up with all the time on his hands, to indulge himself for the next few years in the incredible luxury of reading books, whose lavish supply to him was practically unlimited.
This sounds like a very strange story, and it is unsupported by any extant documentation. But taking a closer look it fits all historical facts in evidence and goes even further explaining the otherwise unexplainable facts of Lenin’s Urtext biography. Historians have indeed been confronted with too many inexplicable facts in his biography which start making sense only when looked at in the light of his secret duplicity which is revealed in this entry… By a special permission from the Russian Minister of Education, this expelled freshman from a second-rate university is allowed to take his bar exams, as an “extern,” at the best law school in Russia, at the University of Saint Petersburg. At the age of 21, without even having to attend college, Lenin becomes a certified lawyer, with highest academic credentials. Needless to say, his four years of excused absence from school are counted toward his revolutionary résumé.
After a short tour of duty as a lawyer, his revolutionary career acquires a predictable shape: a visit abroad to touch base with Russian Marxist luminaries in emigration, headed by Plekhanov; then back to Russia, with another arrest, a jail term, and an exile to Siberia, all characterized by a remarkable leniency in treatment on the part of the Czarist authorities, the fact that could not be dismissed, but was never suitably explained by the official Soviet accounts (or Western versions, for that matter). Then, another visit abroad, and now the sparks are really starting to fly… But before we get to this point which is the subject of my next entry, one last point, a very interesting one, from the psychological perspective, remains to be made in this one.
By that time Vladimir Ulyanov was expected to disappear behind a barricade of revolutionary aliases and so he did. His most famous nom de guerre Lenin would come soon enough, but his by far most inspired earliest alias, woefully unappreciated for its brilliance by historians, who have all somehow missed its significance, was to call himself Comrade Nicholas, daringly raising himself to the top level of dialectical contraposition, vis-à-vis His Imperial Majesty Tsar Nicholas II ipse: “Tsar Nicholas--Comrade Nicholas.” Arrogance? So what? He well deserved it!
Men like this Comrade Nicholas do not come into history in droves, and, to be fair to him, Russia deserved him too.
(Postscriptum: Having acquired his favorite alias Lenin relatively early on, in 1895, Lenin did not abandon Comrade Nicholas, signing himself as Nicholas Lenin and still being called Comrade Nicholas by some of his comrades. However, after Tsar Nicholas’s abdication, in March 1917, Lenin’s antithetical alias had completely outlived its usefulness, and, consequently, was conveniently and permanently retired. Nobody was calling Lenin “Comrade Nicholas” ever since!)

Veni, Vidi, Vici.
(This entry is very short, but momentous, from the world-historical point of view. Lenin’s iconic image in the USSR, and his demonic image in the West, as l’enfant terrible of the Bolshevik takeover of Russia, had made it “politically incorrect” to represent him as anything but a self-sustained genius, a Hegelian Geist, to be sure, and thus the contradiction of both images with the story below was too hard to take and to reconcile with standard Lenin mythology. But here is this story anyway---)
The Tsarist Okhrana now had another, far more ambitious assignment for Comrade Nicholas, alias Lenin. At the turn of the twentieth century, great efforts had been made by the Russian Marxists to merge all tiny leftist revolutionary groups and factions into a single party. This was the main reason behind the founding of the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party (RSDWP), which, officially, dates back to 1898, but, in practical terms, had become more or less organized only by the time of its ‘Second’ Congress, in 1903. By this time, it had started to worry the Czarist authorities, but just as its delegates were hoping to become an authentic significant political force, there came Okhrana’s ace in the hole, Lenin, who saw it, and destroyed it.
His coup was absolutely brilliant in its simplicity. He joined the Party, made waves, and then, abruptly and decisively, resigned from all his posts, declaring himself the majority alternative (in Russian, Bolshevik) to the existing RSDWP organization, labeling it with equal audacity, the minority (in Russian, Menshevik).
His audacity, of course, did not go unappreciated, making him some loyal and adoring followers, who saw him as the ultimate man of action. But as far as Okhrana was concerned, Lenin had done quite well as their double agent too. From now on, in Okhrana’s analysis, the pesky Russian Social Democratic Workers Party would cease to function as an effective opposition force in Russia, on account of being too much entangled in the petty squabbles among themselves, that is, between the RSDWP establishment and Lenin’s splinter group.
Looking back at it today, little did they know… Or maybe, some of them already knew something, or even knew a lot? After all,-- sorry, Bakunin!-- destruction is the easiest part of creation...
In the meantime, Lenin was now living abroad, and away from the Russian Revolution, full time, and many of his comrades were convinced that he had completely lost touch. With the exception of a brief return, for a few months during the 1905-1906 Russian turbulence, he was away for fifteen years, coming back only in April 1917 (at the height of World War I and a month after the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II), in the most scandalous manner possible: as a stooge for Russia’s worst enemy.

From The Ridiculous To The Sublime.
(Both in Napoleon’s famous phrase, and in Harry Potter’s anti-bogart spell, the word ridiculous (ridiculus) connotes the final stage of the fall of a great man (or the end of the bogart’s scare). My ironic title reverses Napoleon’s dictum to best describe Lenin’s single step from utter desperation to a glorious victory.)
In the summer of 1917, Lenin was a desperate man. With no more Tsarist secret police to watch over him, he was exposed to political and physical dangers from both friend and foe. During one month between the fall of the Czar and his return to Saint Petersburg from Switzerland, Lenin, however, had managed to find himself another sponsor: the government of Germany, still at war with Russia. Germany happily organized and financed his trip home, reasonably expecting that he would be able to stir up enough trouble in Russia to shut down the troublesome Eastern Front. And, of course, they were right: Lenin proved himself capable of destroying Russia for the Kaiser, just as he had destroyed the Russian Social Democratic Workers Party for the Tsarist Okhrana.
Once again Lenin had been used and loved it. But this time he was walking a much tighter rope. His life was at stake, and the Kaiser had nothing to do with it. At issue was his highly compromising Okhrana file which in March 1917 had fallen into the hands of the Provisional Government, which, however, was in no hurry to make its contents public. Now that the new authorities had sensational goods on the man in their possession, they honestly believed that they could choose their own timing as to when and how to use them. As long as Lenin the troublemaker was not wreaking too much havoc in the Russian capital, they stayed put, preferring to keep their options open.
Now, Lenin had a good friend Elena Stasova, a woman with connections, who was sentimentally attached to him.
During the so-called July Days of 1917, when major riots resumed in the capital, allegedly provoked by the Bolsheviks, but attributed to them by false rumor, the new Russian Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky now decided that the time had finally come to get rid of Lenin once and for all. Through her ubiquitous contacts, Elena Stasova was able to learn that Kerensky was considering releasing Lenin’s lethally compromising file to the press.
As soon as Lenin heard this, he knew he was as good as dead and he fled from the Russian capital north into Finland. Before fleeing, however, he ventured to strike an outrageous gambit. Through the selfsame Stasova he urged a preemptive release to the press of the documents, in his own possession, suggesting that he was a German agent of influence, subsidized by Kaiser Wilhelm II.
The bombshell exploded, preempting Kerensky’s own disclosure of the Okhrana file. The press was having a field day, salivating over Lenin’s German ties. Everybody was convinced that this time Lenin was finished for good, but Lenin alone seemed to realize that this was his only chance to survive, and to win the game.
Now Prime Minister Kerensky had this most peculiar dilemma… A Russian police informer, and a German spy--- can these two indictments be successfully reconciled? With this new revelation of Lenin’s connection to the Kaiser, every patriotic Russian was certainly bound to condemn the traitor. Lenin was dead as it were. But imagine what would happen if Kerensky were now to release the Okhrana file, people may immediately become confused and very suspicious.--- So many wild accusations made at once… maybe it was all a hoax, a series of forgeries intended to discredit the man, and Lenin in reality was not guilty of anything?!
No. One deathblow should be enough... And thus by failing to release Lenin’s Okhrana file Kerensky saved Lenin’s skin, while relegating himself, to use the colorful Trotsky phrase, to the garbage dump of history.
So, why did Lenin’s gambit succeed? What Kerensky failed to understand was that Lenin already had many enemies, and only thrived on their animosities. To be finished, he had to be destroyed among friends. That charge of treason was, of course, pretty serious. There was no doubt that Lenin had indeed conspired with Russia’s enemy, in wartime. But this charge had to do with the circumstances of Lenin’s notorious “sealed train” trip over the enemy territory on his way from Switzerland to Russia. Alongside with Lenin there were some thirty distinguished Bolsheviks on that train. Were they all German spies too?
Besides, that sealed train had never been a secret among the Bolsheviks, and Lenin’s supporters would only cheer their leader’s ingenuity in making the Kaiser finance their common Bolshevik cause. From which one can easily conclude with the benefit of hindside of course that the German connection was bound to misfire. So, when the Kerensky government, next, issued an order for Lenin’s arrest, there was nothing there that an experienced hideout artist could not handle. Lenin had fled to Finland, in fear of his life, not because of that German connection exposure, but because of the other charge, which Kerensky had in the palm of his hand, and failed to produce. Being a police stooge, setting up comrades, betraying the Revolutionary ideal,--- that would have appalled Lenin’s supporters. Had they learned about it then and there, they would have torn him down from his lofty pedestal, and, like Roman Malinovsky’s, Lenin’s name would have ended up as nothing more than a footnote in future history books!
“From the sublime to the ridiculous, there is just one step,” Napoleon wrote in his diaries. With Kerensky’s unwitting help, but even more so, protected from any such harm by Lady History herself, Lenin, on a close call, made his own one step in the opposite direction.

A PREQUEL TO LENIN

This is the beginning of my Lenin subsection. As I have mentioned earlier, by and large, I am trying to stick to a kind of chronological order throughout the historical narrative of the Lady section, but not necessarily in a continuous sequence, nor at the expense of a certain flexibility, which is now taking me back to the time before Tsar Nicholas II, and all for a good cause. That is where my prequel to Lenin is situated.
My la forza del destino leitmotif is as always very prominent in this story. The assassination attempt against Emperor Alexander III, made by the inept group of young and inexperienced conspirators, which included a reluctant Alexander Ulyanov, Lenin’s elder brother, might well have succeeded had Alexander II been alive and still the Russian Emperor. However, unlike his reform-minded father, the new Emperor did not stand in the way of Russia’s destiny, and this assassination attempt was easily, virtually playfully, thwarted. Destiny showed her stern face in this case by meting out a disproportionately harsh sentence against a hapless bunch of amateur conspirators whose plans had never been seriously thought through, nor seriously intended to be executed. The message of the death sentences was to convince the public, and, even more importantly, the Emperor himself, that the attempt had indeed been serious.
Ironically, the outcome of this farce was… Lenin. Naturally, it was an unintended consequence, but, once it had materialized, Lenin was immediately destined to become the linchpin of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Lenin, to whom I am now turning my attention, was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he was presented with that spoon at the tender age of seventeen, and, being a man of superhuman ambition, sucked every tiny bit of value out of its silver. And so, our story must start well before this genius of world history had ever become known as Lenin. The year, to which back we fly, is 1887.
In those early years he was Vladimir Ulyanov, and he had a brother Alexander, a student of biology at the University of St. Petersburg. Alexander was in love with his biology classes and was an extremely unlikely prospect to engage in big-time revolutionary activity. But in those years the ammoniac smell of revolution was everywhere, wherever the young were playing the game of dare and double dare. Engaging in some sort of anti-government activity was the thing to do, and it was also the main thrust of peer pressure.
Alexander Ulyanov was drawn into this game too, and the stakes were high. His group was contemplating nothing less than an assassination of Emperor Alexander III six years to the day after the assassination of his father Alexander II in 1881.
But all the participants in the plan were inept and never really serious about it. Their silly conspiracy had no chance to succeed, and had immediately become known to the police, who were now following the group’s every move. The police were aware of course that these kids were by no means some hard-core nihilists, but only an oddball bunch of silly amateurs, who were plotting for fun, and not for the end result. There was no Mr. Big behind them, and no outside connections to watch for, and to track. The question is why the police did not put a stop to this game right away, but allowed it to go on and on, as if playing with fire?
The answer is obvious, yet stunning in its sinister simplicity. The police loved to have a controlled burn on their hands, and wanted to make a big deal out of this case, in order to scare the Tsar into finally leaving his residence in the troublesome St. Petersburg, and moving to the quieter city of Moscow, thus restoring it as Russia’s lawful capital, which was the dream of every Russian nationalist, eventually realized, in 1918, by the Bolsheviks. (To end this storyline right here, Alexander III was not impressed, and, instead of moving to Moscow, chose one of the nearby suburban palaces with a strong iron fence as his new residence!)
Eventually the plot was “discovered.” The conspirators were arrested and put on trial, which was bound to expose their comical incompetence. The case was so ridiculous that it worried the prosecutors that they too were about to lose their face.
And so, they visited the jail and worked on the hapless losers. Nobody tortured anyone into a “confession,” but the defendants were simply given the choice between becoming the laughing stock among their student brethren and the authentic martyrs’ laurels. Noblesse oblige? Mais oui, bien sur! And so it happened that the worm-loving nerd Alexander Ulyanov was the first one to take the bait. The next day in court, he burst into a passionate revolutionary tirade, desiring to save his honor by going up in flames.
The severity of their punishment stunned St. Petersburg, as five death sentences were given out, including one for Alexander Ulyanov. The city residents were intelligent enough to see the defendants for what they were, and could not believe what had just happened…
Thus becoming revolutionary royalty by virtue of his hanging, Alexander Ulyanov did not die in vain. He served his purpose in the cause of destiny, and unwittingly paved the way for his young brother Vladimir to become the unstoppable force that was authorized to change the course of Russian history.

COOPERATING WITH DESTINY

March The First, 1881.
(No self-respecting chronologist of Russian history would ever dare to make a leap from the reign of Ivan III the Great into the reign of Emperor Alexander II, overshooting her universally-acknowledged giants such as Ivan IV Grozny, Peter I the Great, and Catherine II the Great, not to mention the lesser luminaries.
But this is exactly what I am doing here and for a very good reason at that. I am not playing the chronologist here, and those who are looking for the missing greats and notables of Russian history will find them both in the Russia section and later in this section, when I am talking about them in their connection to Stalin.
The general purpose of this section is to present to the reader history unknown, ignored and misunderstood, and my secondary effort to do this with some semblance of a chronological order ought not to be mistaken for a standard chronology of any kind. Please do keep this in mind.
And now my final comment, more specific to the content of this entry, and also others, wherever there might be an impression that an outlandish accident could have the power to change the course of history.
On 1 March 1881, the great Emperor-Liberator, Emperor-Reformer Alexander II of Russia was assassinated after several previously unsuccessful attempts, by a group of demonstrably incompetent conspirators. Under the circumstances, it was clear that the killers were incredibly lucky and the Emperor’s guard was incredibly careless, the combination of which two factors resulting in the success of the otherwise objectively botched attempt, which somehow went through… Now, was it an incredible confluence of unrelated circumstances? Was it an accident of history?
I do not think so. As Comrade Stalin used to say, no incident which has the power to change history is an accident. A different sort of power is at work here, which makes such incidents happen. If these incidents fail to become accidents, that power sends a host of others, at least one of whom is sure to succeed. This is what I call “La Forza Del Destino,” and it is not some “blind force of nature.” There is a very special, extremely vaguely defined group of exceptional people in Russia, whom I have called “the keepers of the faith” (or, also, “the keepers of the nation”). This group is charged with making sure that the Force of Russia’s Destiny meets no impenetrable obstruction. It is, therefore, the force which makes sure that such accidents as March the First, 1881, do happen.
Thus, that fateful day of Emperor Alexander’s assassination was not a history-changing event, but a part of the plan to keep Russian history on the right track. Russia was destined to follow the course taking her to an experience of baptism by fire, as pre-ordained by the Russian Holy Scripture, and that would be the ordeal, which started with the abdication of the Russian Emperor Nicholas II, through the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, the Civil War, the persecution of Russia’s Orthodox Faith, all the way through the Soviet period and another Time of Troubles, which was the Yeltsin era, and so on. To be sure, Russia’s tribulations are by no means over yet, as her destiny has not yet been fulfilled.
For which higher purpose, Russia’s great Emperor-Liberator, Emperor-Reformer Alexander II was destined to die. Not necessarily on 1 March 1881, but sooner or later within a fairly narrow chronological window, la forza del destino had to be satisfied.)

…Nicholas II of Russia was a weak, reckless man, and even his highly intelligent advisers, such as Stolypin and Witte, could not stop Russia’s accelerating slide toward the precipice. But it would be foolish to blame either the Emperor or any of his advisors for what happened to Russia in the fateful year 1917: the slide had already started long before Nicholas’s accession to the throne, and, no matter what bright genius might have come to power, the slide was irreversible.
The best approximation of a bright genius had in fact come to rule over Russia in the person of Alexander II (son of Emperor Nicholas I). Known as the Tsar-Reformer for his numerous progressive reforms, and as the Tsar-Liberator for his abolition of serfdom in 1861, many historians have lamented that, had it not been for the tragic assassination of Alexander II on March the First, 1881 (by the old Julian Calendar, used in Russia prior to 1918, thus separating her from the “apostatic” Gregorian Calendar, used elsewhere, which states the date of the Emperor’s assassination as March 13th, 1881), Russian history would have been totally different, and the events of 1917 would never have taken place.
I can perhaps stretch my agreement with this opinion, but only to the point of accepting the semi-truistic fact that if Alexander’s life had not been cut short by the assassination , thus precluding him from introducing an even more radical set of reforms than those which Russia had seen so far, but it is the if, which makes all the difference. It is my assertion as a historian that by the time of the Emperor’s tragic death Russia had already made up her mind that the slide toward the precipice was indeed the necessary course (see my Stalin book, and other entries in the Lady section, for a further clarification of my perspective on Russia’s realization of her historical destiny), and that was the reason why the genius of enlightened statesmanship, Tsar Alexander II, was “required to be assassinated,” either on that fateful day of the First of March, 1881, or on a different day in close proximity. It is surprisingly easy to establish the trustworthiness of my “conspiracy theory” just by looking at the circumstances of the case, to see that, after several previous attempts on his life had failed, mainly by accident, rather than due to the helpfulness of the Tsar’s protectors, Alexander II found himself exposed to his ultimate mortal danger either through a glaring ineptitude of his guard, or, much more likely, through malicious and willful foul play. (I am particularly knowledgeable about the circumstances of that case as I had the published proceedings of that strange case (under the title Process of 1 March 1881) in my home library in Moscow.)

Some Royal Superstitions.
Curiously, I never read the following in any book, but this was my maternal grandmother Nadezhda’s eerie tale, and I have much more reason to trust it, than any critical historian might have to dismiss it out of hand. Generally speaking, it makes a lot of sense, and the fact that Emperor Nicholas II of Russia had made these two egregious exceptions to the deeply mystical protocol of Russia’s royal superstition is mind-boggling, to say the least…
It is however a known fact that dark superstition had been surrounding the reign of Nicholas II and haunting his German wife ever since the mass celebrations of his May 1896 coronation had produced the horrendous Khodynka tragedy when thousands were trampled to death or badly injured. The tragedy was seen as an evil omen, and the Russian royal family was doomed to be treated with extreme prejudice ever since.
Despite the mildly entertaining and seemingly lightweight character of the content of this entry, dealing with superstition, I advise the reader to treat it with utmost seriousness. It is one thing to be “above superstition,” as if it doesn’t exist, but quite another to spit in its enormous face as it is staring right at you within the close confines of a notoriously superstitious society. Something must really be wrong with this picture…
After the assassination of Alexander II in 1881, Tsarism in Russia was doomed, with everybody, except the Tsars themselves, realizing it. The condition of a revolutionary situation was now much stronger than what Lenin would later describe. (For this, see my entry Comrade Putin’s Party.) In Lenin’s formula, the haves can no longer maintain the old order. In Russia, they did not want to maintain the old order, and neither did the have-nots, thus making it a lethal double-whammy.
In the last days of the weary Romanov Empire a lot of end-of-days legends were roaming all across Russia, using the dark force of superstition to substantiate their apocalyptic self-fulfilling prophesy.
"Why, do you think, was it that after Peter the Great no other Tsar would ever again name his heir Alexei?"-- people were asking each other in 1904, shaking their heads in shock and deepest disapproval of what they had just been witness to. It was virtually a rhetorical question, as they knew that Peter’s hapless son Alexei Petrovich, the weakling traitor, tortured to death by his own father, had been the reason for this unwritten, but (until 1904!) religiously enforced prohibition. In fact, my grandmother Nadezhda solemnly assured me that long before the reckless Tsar Nicholas II had named his son and heir born in 1904 Alexei, Russian royal families had been explicitly warned under no circumstances to name the heir to the Russian Throne by the name of Peter’s son, as this would surely bring a ghastly curse upon their house. If that was indeed so, how come, I wonder, was Nicholas, a highly superstitious man, compelled to go against the fateful prophesy in such a flagrant way, whereas a measly thirteen years later he would be quite easily swayed by yet another dire prophesy (see my next entry Rasputin’s Prophesy!) to commit the unthinkable act of abdication of his Throne? Perhaps, he had been deliberately misled about the prophesy by those around him who wished him and the Romanov dynasty brought to a shattering end?!! (Read more on this in the story of Lenin’s brother Alexander Ulyanov, later in this section.)
But Nicholas wasn’t quite done yet, symbolically inflicting another irreparable damage on his family and on Russia, by breaking yet another taboo. For, another prophesy of the same superstitious nature had allegedly foretold three centuries prior to the time discussed how the Romanov dynasty would come to its bitter end.
“With a Mikhail does it start,” it purportedly said, “and with a Mikhail shall it end.”
Imagine how badly jinxed one man could be, who, in the course of his doomed reign, had broken both these solemn prohibitions no other monarch before him had dared to violate, with such unforgivable carelessness! In addition to giving his heir the taboo name Alexei, in 1917 he abdicated his Throne in favor of yet another taboo first name: Grand Prince Mikhail Alexandrovich who thus technically had become the last Romanov! (And again, see my next entry Rasputin’s Prophesy, where more of this much-ignored, but instructive story will be told.)
…Now, was that yet another coincidence?
No way! If you ask me, the hapless Emperor Nicholas II of Russia did not jump off the bridge of history. He was pushed!
…La forza del destino…

Rasputin’s Prophesy.
Even in his lifetime, Grigori Rasputin was known as a prophet, as in his actual published writings he likes to present himself as a prophet and adopts the distinctive prophetic style. Some of his published prophesies are interesting, but none of them are the subject of this entry. I am rather interested in what is known as his “last prophesy,” his ominous testament to Russia and to the royal family. Needless to say, this letter, purportedly written shortly before his death in December 1916 was never reliably published, and the existing versions of it are undoubtedly spurious, as evidenced by the fact that they all differ in their content. In this entry, I have chosen the less extravagant text of the Russian version (in my verbatim translation) which seems to me more reliable than the English-language versions available on the Internet. What gives this version some measure of credence is the fact that the legend of Rasputin’s last prophesy (according to my grandmother Nadezhda) had preexisted the Bolshevik Revolution and the tragic death of the Russian Imperial family and had caused great anxiety among the Russian nobility well before the reason for such anxiety had become apparent.
Now, as promised, here is the text of Rasputin’s last prophesy in my scrupulously crude translation---
"I write this letter and leave it in Peterburg. I have a premonition that before the first of January [1917] I am to leave life. To the Russian People, to papa [Emperor Nicholas II], to Russian mama [Empress Alexandra], to the children and to all Russian land, I wish to bequeath what they are to undertake. If I am to be killed by hired killers, Russian peasants, my brothers, then you, Russian Tsar, have no one to fear. Stay on the throne and reign. And you, Russian Tsar need not worry about your children. They will rule Russia for hundreds of years more. But if I am murdered by the boyars and noblemen and they spill my blood, then their hands will be stained with my blood and for twenty-five years they will not be able to wash it off their hands. They will flee from Russia. Brothers will rise against brothers, and will be killing each other, and for twenty-five years there will be no persons of nobility left in Russia. Tsar of the Russian land, when you hear the tolling of the bells telling you about the death of Grigori, then know this, that, in case my murder had been committed by your relatives, then not one of your family, that is, not one of your children and your kin shall live for even two years. They shall be killed by the Russian people. I am departing, and I feel inside me God’s command to tell the Russian tsar how he must live after my demise. You must think, weigh all, and act carefully. You must worry about your salvation, and tell your kin that I have paid them with my life. I am to be killed. I am no more among the living. Pray, pray. Be strong. Worry about your chosen lineage."
(Having disposed with these important formal preliminaries, what follows is the main text of this entry.)
Historians and history buffs have an undying fascination for the clad-in-black figure of the mystical starets Grigori Yefimovich Rasputin. Who was this sinister man-- they ask--a brazen charlatan, or a natural-born parapsychological healer and miracle worker? They all agree of course that, regardless of the answer to the first question, Rasputin was a malfeasant manipulative monster, and also the man largely responsible for the fall of the Romanov dynasty.
Rasputin was known at the royal court as starets, the holy man, in the Schopenhauerian sense, which was of course far from making him a ‘saint.’ Many of the historically “registered” holy men were clever charlatans, and very often the only criterion to put them in this exalted category, as opposed to “fraud,” was the level of their success in bamboozling other people.
The story of how the Tsarina of Russia, Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova (nèe Alix von Hessen) succumbed to Rasputin’s spell on account of his apparently proven success in stopping the episodes of hemorrhaging in the young Tsarevich Alexei, suffering from inherited hemophilia, and how his royal father, Tsar Nicholas II, was too weak to curb Rasputin’s rude ambition to meddle in the affairs of the state, is well-known. But what is less known however and what, as it turns out, has had a much greater impact on Russian history, is the so-called Rasputin prophesy made by him to the royal family, as well as to all to whom it may concern. (See its text in the red-and-blue-fonted preamble above.)
The ingenious scoundrel certainly realized that his unprecedented power over the royal family had deeply shocked and disaffected practically all of Russia, which included the most prominent names of the time, and only the Tsar’s personal protection had so far prevented his political and physical demise. But he also knew that sooner or later (in 1916 he already “knew” that it was to be sooner, rather than later), he was doomed to fall, and he must have been desperate trying to postpone the inevitable. The story of how he intimidated the royal couple of Russia, by prophesying the fall of the Romanov dynasty and a national catastrophe in Russia in the unfortunate event of his violent death has been given little attention in history books, although the fact that Nicholas II’s abdication of the Crown just two months after Rasputin’s death, that is in March 1917 was largely precipitated by the effect that this prophesy must have had on him, should have made it more salient in the annals of history.
Nicholas was indeed so deeply disturbed by Rasputin’s assassination in December 1916 that he immediately started contemplating his abdication, in the hope that this desperate move on his part would avert the holy man’s curse from Russia and from the rest of the Romanov dynasty. Alas, when he did indeed abdicate, soon thereafter, he managed to compound the mischief he had already done by making Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich his successor to the Throne (see the previous entry). Terrified of playing the role of the last Tsar of the Romanov dynasty (from Mikhail to Mikhail), the Grand Duke hastily refused the Crown, but the symbolic harm had been done, and it was already too late.
Russia was in a state of shock at the news of Nicholas’s abdication, and even in a greater state of shock, if that were possible, on learning the name of his successor. One of the preeminent figures of the Provisional Government of Russia, the renowned historian and politician Pavel Milyukov, was originally enthralled by the idea of smooth continuity provided by Mikhail’s succession, which Milyukov chose to interpret only as Mikhail’s regency, while the Tsar’s son and heir Alexei was still a minor, but he was utterly devastated by Mikhail’s refusal to accept the responsibility of government, which Milyukov equated to stupidity.
The poor Anglophile Milyukov was a learned man in many respects, but he demonstrated his estrangement from his native Russia by such ignorance of her deepest superstitions. And this man, demonstrably unfit to govern, had the governing responsibility, yet, without much authority, thrust upon him nevertheless. There was no way for Russia to get out of this dire mess, except by total and complete destruction of all this mess and a new creation ex nihilo.
Coming back to Rasputin’s fateful prophesy, historians and history buffs have been asking the question as to who exactly starets Rasputin was. My more incisive question is not about Rasputin, but about the venerable confessor of Tsarina Alexandra and of the whole royal family, archbishop Theophan Bystrov, who allegedly introduced Starets Rasputin to the royal family, giving his wholehearted endorsement to the man he should have known to be a “dirty rotten scoundrel.” Why did he do it? And why were the people around the royal family keeping their distance from the unraveling disaster until even Rasputin’s assassination would become too little too late?
My answer ought to come as no surprise to anybody who has been reading me with some attention. Russian monarchy had long been doomed, and la forza del destino (or, more accurately, the conspiracy to cooperate with destiny) was already vigorously at play.

ORIGINS OF RUSSIAN HISTORY

Gostomysl The Wise.
The legend of Gostomysl is important for the understanding of the nature and the rationale of Stalinism, and of Soviet totalitarianism as such. It answers the following question: How did the first foreigner end up as the ruler of Russia at the dawn of Russian history, which officially takes off on its course in the year 862 AD?

This legend is told somewhat differently, depending on who is telling it. As is always the case with legends, historians are split on the historicity of Gostomysl, but this is a matter of little importance. As Pushkin says,

“The tale is a lie, but it contains a hint;

A lesson to those who may profit from it.”

I first became familiar with the legend of Gostomysl at a very young age from a superb reproduction of Karl Bryullov’s painting The Death of Gostomysl in a folder of Treasures of Russian Art in my home library. Its hint to me has been that personal freedoms are not exactly among Russia’s national desiderata. According to the legend, the Russians used to be free once, and the freest of them was the great city of Novgorod. In fact, at a certain point its “freedom” had grown so great that violence had become rampant, corruption pervasive, and moral depravity had struck at the very heart of Russia’s beleaguered communities. Therefore in the year 862 a delegation of respectable Novgorodian citizens visited their ailing Elder Gostomysl, who was lying in bed ready to die. “Our freedom has got out of hand. Tell us what to do!” they complained. With his dying effort, Gostomysl rose up in bed. "Go abroad," he rasped, "Find there a great warrior, the sound of whose name alone can strike fear in the hearts of his neighbors. Tell him then: ‘Great is our land, but there is no order in it. Come, rule over us!’” With these last words Gostomysl died. The delegation was determined to follow their beloved elder’s last will and testament to the letter, and soon after that, the capable Varangian warlord Rurik was installed in Novgorod as the first autocratic ruler of Russia.
(For history buffs, it is said, furthermore that, having found Rurik, the Novgorodians nextfound a way to marry him to the granddaughter of the late Elder Gostomysl, so that in the veins of every Rurikid, starting with Rurik’s immediate children, ran Russian blood! There is an alternative version of Rurik’s marriage to a Scandinavian princess, but, considering that Rurik himself is a basically legendary figure, and his wife, even more so, anybody’s version of Russia’s royal ancestry is just as good or just as shaky as another one. As far as I am concerned, it makes no sense to argue about such silly trifles as the ancestry of Russian rulers. We know that the later Russian rulers had practically no Russian blood in them anyway, but the instructive story of Catherine the Great gives us a sufficient answer already to the question of this fact’s importance. In other words, Russia has always been bigger than the specific national origin of her rulers, from Rurik to Catherine to Stalin. Her only demand to them has been that they embrace the Russianness of their sacred mission, and wholeheartedly and capably serve Russia’s national interest.)
Comrade Stalin liked this Gostomysl legend very much, and no wonder! It legitimized strong authoritarian (totalitarian, in Stalin’s case!) rule, and then Stalin was himself something of a “foreigner,” a Georgian who spoke Russian rather poorly and with a heavy accent. Yet, Russia had embraced him and given him the keys to the Kremlin, for, as long as he was in it not for his own aggrandizement, but only for the glory of Mother Russia, he was an acceptable choice. Well, Stalin the Georgian (like Rurik the Varangian before him, and a few others in between) did measure up to the task!
…A lesson to those who may profit from it.

Kiev And Rus.
Every educated person in the world reasonably interested in Russian history is familiar with the term Kievan Rus, which refers to the early period of Russian history from the ninth to the thirteenth century, when Russia had came to be identified with her principal city and capital which happened to be Kiev. One of the defining events of Russian history, her acceptance of Christianity, is directly linked to Kiev, where--in the year 987--Russia’s ruler St. Vladimir was baptized by an emissary of the Patriarch of Constantinople, following which event all Russia, starting with Kiev and spreading north, was Christianized in the course of the next couple of years. (For "monumental-historical" reasons, 988 has been stated as the official year of Russia’s acceptance of Christianity, although this may not be technically correct. But then, such technicalities are not important, and even trivial and annoying, as long as the official year is understood as a symbolic date, thus parrying the nitpicking epées of the critical historians.)
The colossal importance of this fact must not be dismissed or misinterpreted. Today Kiev is the capital of an independent state, which is not Russia, but Ukraine. Who has more historical right to Kiev, the Russians or the non-Russian Ukrainians? Mind you that ethnic Russian Ukrainians, who constitute a large portion of the Ukrainian population with overwhelming majorities in Eastern Ukraine and in the Crimea, are quite anxious to rejoin the Russian Federation, but they will never be allowed by Russia to separate from Ukraine, leaving the holy city of Kiev under foreign occupation… (A very similar argument was raised by the State of Israel against Palestine and in that dispute the majority of the Western supporters of Ukrainian independence from Russia have resolutely taken the opposite stand.)
Ironically, there is a third claimant to Kiev’s ownership, which is Poland, but the Polish chances of having a say in this matter are slim, to put it mildly. Still, in the messy state of the present-day world order, no claims of this nature ought to be casually dismissed. (As a matter of fact, the most nationalistically-minded parts of Ukraine, her Western territories, are actually the most contested ones, with Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania claiming adjoining parts of Ukraine for themselves, and Ukraine responding with counterclaims of her own!)
To be quite honest, modern independent Ukraine is a rather artificial entity, containing parts that historically had never belonged to her. Which makes it all the more important to understand the historical reality behind the historical entity known as Kievan Rus. I encourage all interested readers to personally dig into the great multitude of available sources on this subject, as in this entry I won’t attempt to discuss its many details and aspects. What I am offering here is perhaps a teaser, touching on a few relevant historical facts and nuances.
As I already noted, in the earlier Gostomysl/Rurik entry, Prince Rurik was established as the Grand Prince of Novgorod, and also of all Russia, which was centered around Novgorod at the time. His brothers Sineus and Truvor received smaller towns from him, which, too, were part of the Russian Principality, and thus counted under Rurik’s domain. Having been established, Rurik was eager to take control of the known trade route “from the Vikings to the Greeks,” and with this in mind, he sent two of his men, Askold and Dir, to Constantinople. On their way south along the river Dnieper they saw a settlement, which the inhabitants called Kiev, after its legendary founder Kiy (he had three participating siblings of lesser importance), who is said to have founded Kiev in 482 AD (one of those symbolic dates which make life easier to all non-critical historians). Askold and Dir with their entourage then decided to take over the settlement, and were effective rulers of Kiev, until Prince Oleg who ruled Russia as regent after Rurik’s death showed up, accused them of usurping power in Kiev, killed them both, and himself became the ruler of Kiev, moving the Russian capital from Novgorod to Kiev, thus laying the foundation of Kievan Rus.
Before we move forward with this story, the origin of Kiev and its native inhabitants is of great interest. The tribe that had settled in these mid-Dnieper lands is known as Polyane. Curiously, the Polish nation claims its ancestors also to be of the Polyane tribe, and on these grounds has claimed Kiev and much of Ukraine as its rightful domain. There is a lingering confusion about this still going on, I suspect deliberately, on the part of Poland. But here is the historical reality which is admittedly confusing indeed. Polyane means people of the fields, and the privilege of living in the fields was not limited to the early inhabitants of Poland, who were in fact a West Slavic tribe. At the same time there was an East Slavic tribe also called Polyane, and the original Kievans belonged to it, and not to the West Slavic tribe which populated ancient Poland… (End of story, as far as I am concerned, but, I am sure, not, as far as many others are.)
Returning to the history of Kievan Rus, Kiev, thus, became “the mother of all Russian cities,” a place sacred to the Russian heart. It was in Kiev that Russian Christian Orthodoxy was born in 988. The peak of Kievan power falls upon the reign of the great Russian ruler Yaroslav Mudry (1019-1054) who has been named as the greatest Ukrainian in a recent Ukrainian national poll. (Which makes no sense, as there was nothing that can be identified as “Ukrainian” in him! Moreover, the pride of Russia’s Baltic Fleet today is the recently commissioned frigate The Yaroslav Mudry.) Ironically, the glorious period of Yaroslav’s greatness followed by a decline parallels the experience of Charlemagne whose Empire was split between his sons. Yaroslav’s five sons (later down to three) inherited a divided domain, and, although Kiev’s supremacy was not brought down right away, it was badly shaken then and there, and could not possibly survive for too much longer.
Indeed, after a protracted series of internecine struggles Prince Andrei Bogolyubsky son of Yuri Dolgoruky, the founder of Moscow, perpetrated the act of ultimate disrespect: having defeated his rivals to the Prince of Kiev title, he gave the city away to his vassals, while transferring the Russian capital to the northern city of Vladimir, which he liked much more, and where he had his private residence Bogolyubovo. This event took place in 1169, after which the city of Kiev lost its political and administrative significance. (This Karamzin version has been contested by more recent historians, but it does not differ in principle from the commonly accepted assertion that the great city of Kiev had already lost its importance as the Russian capital prior to it being sacked and burned by the Mongols in December 1240.)
The subsequent history of Kiev has it under the control of the Golden Horde from 1240 to 1362, annexed to Lithuania from 1362 to 1569 and declared part of the Polish Kingdom after the 1569 merger of Poland and Lithuania. After the Bogdan Khmelnitzky rebellion, and the 1667 Treaty of Andrusovo between Russia and Poland, Kiev was returned to Russia. Kiev and Ukraine would remain an integral part of the Russian Empire until the chaos of the 1917 and the Russian Civil War, during which time Ukraine either fell under German occupation or split into parts declaring themselves “independent” for different conflicting reasons, and with different conflicting allegiances. As soon as the chaos of 1918-1921 settled down, Ukraine was whole again and again as part of the Russian Empire, this time (since 1922, to be precise) called the USSR.
The tragic farce of the Soviet Union’s collapse brought about the “independence” of its former constituents, some of them with fairly legitimate claims to national identity, while others quite preposterous. Ukraine was among the latter kind.
To sum it up, speaking of Kiev’s (or Ukrainian) “independence,” such a notion is a demonstrably artificial construct. Eastern Ukraine and the Crimea are predominantly Russian entities, while most parts of Western Ukraine are being claimed by other nations.
On the other hand, despite Kiev’s decline in the twelfth century, its destruction in the thirteenth, and foreign occupation thereafter, it has never ceased to be the mother of Russian cities, the cradle of Russian Orthodox Christianity, one of the most intensely Russian places anywhere in the world.

Saint Prince Alexander Nevsky.
Saint Alexander Nevsky has been voted The Greatest Russian in the recent Russian national poll, conducted under the designation Imya Rossiya (Name Russia). For the details on this poll and its results, please consult the Imya Rossiya project, which was discussed in a series of entries, in my Russia section.
The story of the greatest Russian and canonized Russian Saint, Prince Alexander Nevsky presents us with a veritable treasure trove of understanding the sources and motivations of Soviet and modern Russian foreign policy. The far-reaching historical significance of this story is capsulated in the incisive question of how and why Prince Alexander Nevsky got his sainthood from the Russian Church. Asking this question allows us to get straight to the point, bringing us face to face with one of those gems, which reflect light not so much into the eerie darkness of the past, as into the foggy dimness of the future. Not surprisingly, therefore, Alexander Nevsky was one of Stalin’s favorite historical personages, and Stalin even commissioned a movie about his heroic deeds, which broadly hints, but does not tell the whole story.
The standard story of Alexander Nevsky (leaving aside his Christian hagiography) pictures him as a warrior of extraordinary might and skill since an early age, who distinguished himself against foreign invaders from the West (Swedes, Germans, and Lithuanians, under King Mindaugas, the founder of the Lithuanian State). He is also known for having refused help against Russia’s enemies, self-servingly offered by Pope Innocent IV, in exchange for Russia’s submission to Catholicism. To the contrary, his decision was to snub the West altogether, making a deal with the Mongols instead. Under this deal, Russia was to pay tribute to the Golden Horde, which was tantamount to submission, in the eyes of some unsympathetic historians, who questioned Alexander’s greatness and eligibility for sainthood on the grounds of this deal and also on the grounds of his rather extraordinary cruelty in dealing with domestic opposition and internal rebellions.
Sympathetic historians, on the other hand, like to stress Alexander’s pragmatism in dealing with the Mongol situation, which was militarily hopeless for Russia at the time, and left him no choice but to accept the yoke. It was not so lopsided however as Alexander extracted a lot of benefits for Russia from his deal. As a result, Russia was spared from further plunder and destruction by the Mongols, was able to regroup, and to prepare militarily for a future war of national liberation, choosing the proper time, when Russia was stronger and the Golden Horde was weaker… In other words, Alexander Nevsky can be properly called Russia’s savior at a time, when the nation’s fate was hanging in the balance, and on all accounts, he well deserved his sainthood. As for his manifest cruelty, well, it was a sure-footed sign of strong leadership; the alternative, being a sign of weakness, was unacceptable.
Let us now get back to the Alexander Nevsky movie.
The movie’s centerpiece is Alexander’s victory over the Teutonic knights in 1242, and his stern warning to all enemies of Russia that, although all foreigners were welcome guests, “all those who come with a sword shall perish by the sword.” There is an interesting personage in the movie, one of Alexander’s most trusted lieutenants, played by the great Russian actor Nikolai Okhlopkov, whose character’s name is Buslay, which sounds a lot like a Tatar name… This matter, however, is left unclear in the movie, although Okhlopkov’s distinctly Russian facial features leave an impression that Buslay is Russian through and through. There is a suggestive hint, behind the scenes, that this Buslay may indeed have been a Tatar troop commander helping the Russian troops to achieve their victory over the Teutons, with all that this implies.
It is a lesser known fact, therefore, perhaps, completely unknown to my readers, that prior to the decisively won battles with the invaders from the West, Alexander had made a sweet deal with the invaders from the East, namely, the Mongols and the Tatars, who had ravaged most of Southern Russia, under the banners of Genghis Khan’s heirs. Choosing the lesser of the two evils, he had become a blood brother of Temuchin’s great-grandson Sartak, who was also the elder son of the great Batu Khan. (Curiously, the above-mentioned Pope Innocent IV later insisted that Sartak was a Christian, probably based on a rumor that he, Sartak, was a blood-brother to a Christian prince?) Alexander’s bold move thus killed three birds with a single stone: he deflected the onslaught of the fierce Mongol invaders away from Northern Russia sending the main Mongol armies westward (that is, against Russia’s actual and potential enemies!); he also found himself a powerful ally against the West, who sent him troops to help defeat the Western invaders. Perhaps, there was indeed a historical Buslay, commanding those troops, but, whoever he was, Alexander’s plan had indeed succeeded, as evidenced by the fact that the Russian Church was sufficiently moved by his achievement, to bestow on him her highest honor, which is sainthood. There was, of course, a third bird: by becoming “related” to the great Batu Khan, Alexander received a markedly preferential treatment from the Golden Horde in Russia’s domestic squabbles. Becoming the most powerful Prince in Russia was helpful not only to him personally, but, eventually, to Russia’s consolidation under one strong leadership. (Historically, Russia was still a long way from achieving this goal, but Alexander’s elevation was a good step toward it.)
As for Stalin, he learned most from history, more, in fact, than from the life surrounding him, and in World War II, his grand strategy vis-à-vis Japan was based on two preeminent whales: Saint Alexander Nevsky’s lesson of how to use the East against the West, and also on… Giacomo Puccini’s opera Madama Butterfly. (I trust that my reader is sufficiently well educated to know what this opera is about, and to understand its long-reaching implications for the East meets West relationship, considering that Russia, being neither, or, perhaps, both, can thus successfully play the two against each other…)
(And as a postscript to this entry, even if I have mentioned this in a couple of places elsewhere, my parents gave me the name Alexander in honor of Saint Alexander Nevsky, Russia’s Patron Saint in World War II, which makes my interest in this great Russian Prince even more personal.)

The Two-Headed Eagle.
Everybody with an elementary interest in world history seems to know that before Catherine the Great and Peter the Great, there was another Great Russian ruler, Tsar Ivan Grozny, known to the English-speaking countries  as Ivan the Terrible. Some visitors to Moscow, familiar with her Kremlin, further assume that its ‘Belfry of Ivan the Great’ was a relic of Grozny’s reign. This is not the case, however.
Well before those two certified Greats, Peter and Catherine, and a good hundred years before Tsar Ivan IV Grozny, his grandfather Ivan III was the ruler of Russia, and it was he who is officially known as Ivan the Great in Russian history.
And it was Ivan III, from whose momentous, yet somehow undervalued, reign originates Russia’s Manifest Destiny, the tale of Three Romes, and a Fourth shall not be.
The Russian Double-Headed Eagle has been the most recognizable symbol of Russia’s nationhood (except for the intensely familiar Soviet State symbols: the red flag with its hammer and sickle, and the distinctive star-crowned emblem of the globe, embraced, inside a semi-wreath, by the two heaps of wheat), ostensibly since times immemorial, but more accurately, yes, since the reign of Ivan the Great!
Originally, however, the Russian double-headed eagle was not Russia’s at all, but had been the proud coat of arms of the illustrious house of the Paleologs, of the Byzantine fame. The eagle’s two heads, looking left and right, represented the two parts of a divided Roman Empire, whose sole heir the Byzantine Empire had claimed to be. Just as the Turks were demolishing the remnants of that Byzantine Empire, Thomas Paleolog, the brother of the last Emperor of Byzantium escaped, rather ignominiously, the dangers of the invasion by seeking refuge in Rome, where he speedily arrived with his little daughter Sophia. The reason why his flight can be justly called “ignominious” is that, although he was a Greek Orthodox Christian by religion, yet he had the nerve to seek protection from the biggest nemesis of Eastern Orthodoxy, the “Apostate Bishop of Rome,” a.k.a. the Pope.
Alas for the Christian honor of the Byzantine Empire, he was not the only one to seek the Pope’s help. Even the highest leaders of the Byzantine Orthodox Church were doing exactly the same thing, and to no avail, as it turned out, but to the greatest humiliation and utter discreditation of their Church, leaving the Russian Orthodoxy standing alone, for everybody to see, as the last bastion of pure Christianity on the face of the earth. (For more on this subject, see my entry The Three Romes of Russia in the Russia section, and similar entries elsewhere.)
With this windfall in his possession, Pope Paul II devised a rather clever plan, in his own mind. He was also afraid of the fierce power of the Turks himself, but, at the same time, he never forsook his Christian duty to convert the world into the Roman-Catholic faith. The splendid opportunity to impose the Unia on the Greek Church had already been taken by the late Pope Eugenius IV (with mixed success, I might add). But Paul II now had a plan to convert Russia to Catholicism, at the same time seeking a united military front against the Turks with the mighty ruler of Russia Grand Duke Ivan III, who, as I said before, is remembered by history (deservedly) as Ivan the Great. And all of this hinged on marrying the widowed Russian ruler to the heiress of the old Byzantine glory, for which purpose the Pope started playing the hallowed role of an international matchmaker.
His mission was successful, insofar as that royal marriage was concerned, even though he did not live to see the fruit of his labor, that was to be reaped by his successor Pope Sixtus IV of the Sistine Chapel fame. (The ignorance exhibited by both these Popes regarding the Russian determination to cling to Orthodoxy, and to snub any effort at conversion can be excused: after all, this stratagem was worth a try!) The wedding of Ivan and Sophia was lavishly celebrated in Moscow in the spring of 1472 with just one small twist, which should not surprise history buffs: Sophia was a bride in absentia.
She arrived in Moscow six months later, when the wedding was properly celebrated again, and now, at last, properly consummated. Sophia was to become the mother of many children to Ivan’s delight (even though he already had a son from his first marriage), but, in the meantime, she came bearing an amazing gift, which was of such extraordinary consequence that it is hard to imagine that even Ivan, who was brilliant enough to recognize its potential significance, could have foreseen that it was fated to exceed his wildest expectations, to have an enduring effect on the ages to come, and to shine even brighter in the next millennium of Russian and world history.
Sophia presented her husband with nothing less than the Paleolog Coat of Arms, the double-headed eagle, and by its virtue the Russian ruler was now the legitimate inheritor of the glory of the Roman Empire! Her symbolic dowry explicitly meant that the Byzantine Empire was no longer capable of carrying the torch of uncorrupted Christianity, passed from Rome to Constantinople during the heretical reign of Charlemagne, according to the traditional version elaborated by the Orthodox Church, and, subsequently, by the rulers of Russia. So, now this torch, or, to be precise, this double-headed eagle coat of arms, originally representing East and West, but now coming to represent the whole world, was passed to Moscow, Rome Number Three and the Last!
But this is not the end of our story of the two-headed eagle. With the realization that Russia had officially become the sole heir to the glory of Rome came the compulsion to capitalize on it. The legend was born, by artificial insemination, at Ivan’s royal court, of how Tsar Ivan, the descendant of Prince Rurik, was also an heir to the most respected Emperor of the original Roman Empire Augustus Caesar. According to it, there came a time, during Augustus’s long reign, when the Emperor became old and tired, and decided to divide his vast domain among his younger brothers. (Sic! That was how the matter of succession was decided in Russia at the time, and, as they say, all politics are local, and, in this case, “when in Moscow, Rome does as the Russians do!”) One of the brothers, Prussus, received the lands in the East, which subsequently were to be known as Prussia. Prussus, of course, was himself the father of a long and splendid dynasty, and his heir, in the fourteenth generation, was none other than Prince Rurik, the more recent ancestor of Ivan the Great! (…Eureka! Russia and Prussia are related, after all! I wonder if Mr. Putin has already shared this wonderful news with Frau Merkel?!)
Sorry to spoil the charm, but this hastily manufactured legend turned out to be so embarrassing, in the eyes of Ivan’s heirs, that it could not possibly survive as a credible reconstruction of Russia’s royal family tree. I am, however, reluctant to dismiss it, as it throws a revealing light on Russia’s disposition at the time, not to seek her Third Rome legitimacy in the much-discredited Byzantium (except for her eager appropriation of the Second Rome’s emblem), but, cutting out the middleman, to go straight to the source of royal authority, the first Emperor of the First Rome ipse.
By the same token, Ivan the Great no longer had an interest in the skills of the Byzantine artists, choosing Westerners instead (and thus breaking with the tradition), for Moscow’s rebuilding spree, which included a major reconstruction of Moscow’s greatest pride, the Kremlin.

"NO WAY TO TREAT A LADY"

Cherchez La Femme!
The celebrated opening line of Nietzsche’s Jenseits is: “Supposing truth is a woman-- what then?” I feel the urge to paraphrase it like this: “Supposing history is a woman--- what then?” In view of my approach to history, this is not much of a stretch.-- Supposing history is… truth?
…There can be no understanding of Russia without understanding her history. But history exists in different versions. As Comrade Stalin used to say, “History is a class concept.” ...So, what is truth?

Coming back to my Nietzschean paraphrase: “Supposing history is a woman-- what then?” I can think of only one worthy answer---

"Cherchez La Femme!"

“No Way To Treat A Lady.”
History is in fact a very delicate lady, and I say that she has been rather shamefully treated and is in dire need of getting her honor back. Her worst woe is that she is being kept, gagged and bound, in a dark cellar, while some impudent impostors have been successfully impersonating her. How is it possible? you may ask, as presumably history deals with facts, and “facts are stubborn things.”
How naïve is that last phrase! Facts are, indeed, stubborn things, except that in all ages and generations the things, which we have accepted as “facts,” have usually been not. A Chinese wisdom says that “when one man says a lie, it is still a lie, until a hundred men repeat it, when it becomes the truth.” Thus is all history made, and thus fakes acquire the name of facts!
Nietzsche makes exactly the same point in the following two passages:
“All things are subject to interpretation,” he says. “Whichever interpretation prevails at a given time is a function of power, and not truth.” And this one, too: “There are no facts, only interpretations.”
This is a virtually identical thought to Stalin’s “history is a class concept,” but his is of course dressed up in Marxian clothing. My frequent recourse to Stalin's dictum must be appreciated by anybody who makes history, especially political history, the object of their lifelong study. The meaning of this phrase reaches beyond the Marxist idiom, going straight to Nietzsche, bringing up the critical philosophical point that what we call “history” holds no objectivity in it at all, but mainly deals with subjective interpretations, production and repackaging of fact. Its output is normally fiction, or what Nietzsche calls “monumental history.” (In fact, Nietzsche justifiably argues that the best history is always mythology at heart…)
As a matter of fact, I think that we ought to redefine the term “fact” as something which we either honestly believe or deliberately propose to be true at the given time. All "facts" are made of pure subjectivity dressed up as objectivity? Incidentally, is it at all possible for anybody or anything to liberate the real lady history from her bondage? I don't think so! At least, such a possibility is contrary to what I have discovered my personal experience.
Besides, no one can claim that they know history, even if they may have been "eyewitness" to it. Things aren’t always what they seem to be, even to an eyewitness! But what we surely can and must do, in order to restore the lady’s honor, is to tell posterity what we know, and what we think we know, about the important things which happened on our watch, or to which we have had an inside track, with just one caveat, that we are not passing off our story as gospel truth, but only as what we think may have been the truth, with a full recognition of our limitations, and courageously allowing for the possibility of a possible self-deception.

LA FORZA DEL DESTINO

These are excerpts from the Russia section of my book Nunc Dimittis.
The Wrecking Balls of Russian History.
(In my general treatment of Russian history, I have a “fatalistic” explanation for all historical “irregularities” which have occurred in the last thousand-plus years, and my view of the role of personality in history was already expressed on several previous occasions. Yet, I welcome each opportunity to reiterate it, and here is one of such opportunities.
Exceptional personalities attain greatness only when their actions are in full harmony with historical destiny. Should they run astray of the national course, they will be crushed and the historical course will be resumed. In this sense, one cannot say that the actions of the two historical actors in this entry [Emperor Nicholas II and Mikhail Gorbachev] transformed the course of Russian history. What each of them did was consistent with that course. Yet, historical necessity cannot absolve either of them (or any other historical actor, for that matter, caught in a history-changing situation) from personal responsibility for their actions, by the very same token as Judas Iscariot cannot be absolved from his culpability as the betrayer of Jesus by the historical necessity of Christ’s Passion and Resurrection.)
Russian history is replete with gigantic, self-induced calamities, which have rightfully earned them the name Smutnoye Vremya: The Time of Troubles. This murky term was originally applied to a particularly difficult period of Russian history in the early 17th century. But a far more intriguing time of troubles must have been the transition of Russia from the power of the tsars to Soviet power, as a result of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. To this I must also add perhaps an even more intriguing “time of troubles,” which was the collapse of the USSR, in our fairly recent memory.
Needless to say, both these strange periods of Russian history will be receiving an examination in the next subsection of the Russia section, but at this time I would like to give some attention to the two conspicuous wrecking balls of Russian history over all time, Nicholas II of Russia and Mikhail Gorbachev of the Soviet Union. Why them only? Because technically these two are the most conspicuous of all.
Indeed, both Nicholas and Gorbachev personally signed the fateful papers (the former, his abdication which precipitated the collapse of the old Tsarist order; the latter, the order of the dissolution of the USSR), and so both had become personally responsible for what woes their two signatures would release upon the Russian nation. Their actions revealed their common inherent weakness: a Peter or a Putin would never have signed anything like that, even if their life depended on it.
On the other hand, calling them “the wrecking balls of Russian history,” I am by no means suggesting their decisive role in actually wrecking Russia. After all, a wrecking ball is only a dumb piece of weight. I would never suggest that in both those cases, when Russia collapsed, it happened because of some Tsar’s or some General Secretary’s voluntaristic moves. Neither of them would have been competent enough for the task of changing the course of Russian history, had Russia not wanted and invited that change herself. So, let us not equate the tool with its operator, and in this case neither Tsar Nicholas, nor Comrade Gorbachev can qualify as operators.
And lastly, there is a significant historical peculiarity here defying the visual cliché of imagining a wrecking ball typically struck from outside the building. In Russia’s case, however, the ball could only be swung from the inside, and so it was.

“La Forza Del Destino.”
As the reader can see, having read the red-font paragraphs of the previous entry, the two of them are closely connected through their overwhelming Grundthema: the force of destiny. The discussion started earlier goes on in this entry, this time with more emphasis on destiny than on personality. Once again, let us observe that our subject is Russia, and not Russian history, which has determined this entry’s placement in this section.
Historical happenings in Russia are governed not so much by the force of the character of her rulers, as by what may be called the force of destiny, that is, Russia’s controlled destiny.
Peter the Great was able to transform Russia not only because of his great personal abilities, but because the time was right and he was allowed to do so by the keepers of the Russian destiny. False Dmitri I before him, was a very capable man who wanted to introduce in Russia, a full century before Peter, many of those same reforms which would later make Peter I Peter the Great, but the time was not right, and he was not allowed. Tsar Alexander II could have been counted as the greatest Russian ruler of all time, had he lived just a little longer, but Russia was about to take a different course than that of reforms and he was not allowed. (See my entry March The First, 1881, in the History section, for more on this subject.)
The title of this entry is in Italian, taken from the 1862 opera by Giuseppe Verdi. Its delicious irony is that the opera was commissioned by Russia, and first performed in St. Petersburg, while Tsar Alexander II was still quite alive and well, having just liberated the Russian serfs from their bondage. The Force of Destiny! This is so Russian, yet so much fogged up in that triple mystery, noted by Winston Churchill…
Tsar Nicholas II’s sudden abdication in March 1917 horrified a lot of people in Russia, who rightly saw it as an irreparable harm having been done to the legitimacy of power in Russia. Many were saying that Nicholas was thus overreacting to the mystical curse of Grigori Rasputin, gruesomely assassinated only a few months before, in December 1916. Rasputin had made a prophesy of some terrible things to happen to Russia in the event of his violent death, which he, Rasputin, had been very reasonably anticipating. People also said that Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, in whose favor Nicholas II formally relinquished the throne, was too horrified by his own demons to accept the crown thus hurled at him. In addition to the Rasputin curse, there was this terrible prophecy, that the three-hundred-year-old Romanov dynasty that had started with a Mikhail would surely end with a Mikhail, should Russia have the audacity to bring one of that name to her throne.
Therefore Mikhail Alexandrovich turned down the crown in horror, but, as people said, the harm had already been done. The crown had already been passed on to a Mikhail, and it was not up to the Grand Duke turned Tsar, to thwart the strike of Destiny. And now the Romanovs were finished, and with them Tsarism in Russia had come to an end.
Next was the famous Provisional Government. My previous 'provisional' title for this entry was Provisional Incompetence, which is rather revealing, but does not tell the full story. The level of incompetence in those strange months of Russia’s quasi-democracy was extreme, but the question ought to be raised why it was so, since the leaders of Russia at the time were all commendably bright and capable men. The brightest star of the first half-time was the highly respected in the West intellectual Pavel Milyukov, Foreign Minister in the first government of Prince Lvov, and the towering figure of the period, outshining Lvov. The second and last hero of the transition was Alexander Fedorovich Kerensky, the only true democrat in Russian politics of the time, and probably of all time and, for that reason, equally hated by his enemies on the non-democratic right and on the non-democratic left.
Historians are quick to point out the horrifying mistakes, each of them lethal, committed by Milyukov and Kerensky during their respective tenures (see the History section). Meanwhile, the Russian losers, in exile, were quick and acrimonious in putting the blame on the West:
“For quite some time now, some Russian people have been voicing their bitter suggestion that the Entente had not just defeated Germany, but Russia as well. The Allies do not want a great unified Russia, they are better off with Russia fractured and weakened. It is better for them to have Russia that can be pushed and manipulated, than a mighty Russia, which must be reckoned with as a factor of world politics…” (From the March 1919 letter of the Russian émigré National Center to the British General Hallman.)
But let us not spread the blame for Russia’s troubles around. The tragedy of both Milyukov and Kerensky was not of a tactical nature. Neither of them had understood the fixed course Russia was on, neither could change it. The force of destiny was with Lenin at the time, and to him and to his handful of wild and badly inexperienced Comrades was it now predisposed to hand over the laurels of victory.

Understanding Leninism.
(The subject of this entry is extremely serious and requires a much more thorough treatment than this short entry can possibly provide. But the reason why I keep it so short is that, as I have explained, the treatment of this subject is entrusted to the historical Lady section, which follows. After all, Lenin and Leninism are truly the property of history unknown, ignored, and misunderstood. Meanwhile, the present entry stays the separate course charted by the Russia section.)
Two kinds of historians make two kinds of mistakes about Lenin and Leninism, which need to be addressed and rectified right away.
One kind, which by now may have become extinct, but requires a mention nevertheless, sees Leninism as a fairly decent beginning of what would suddenly turn into an abominable anomaly, under Stalin, lamenting such a rude twist of political fortune. The other kind see Leninism as an evil turn for Russia, lamenting the demise of the “promising democracy” under Russia’s Provisional Government of 1917, and spreading the blame accordingly. Both kinds are badly mistaken in confusing Lenin with Leninism, and also in seeing the Leninist period of Soviet history as an institutional phenomenon, whereas it was undoubtedly a transitional one. But first things first.
It is helpful to realize that if we are talking about understanding Lenin, I have a whole lengthy subsection on him in the History section, which follows the Russian section. But my subject here is Leninism, which is not so much about Lenin, as it is about Russia, and her acceptance of Lenin as Russia’s transitional leader. Lenin himself was an opportunistic megalomaniac, picked by Russia’s secret police Okhrana to subvert the pesky revolutionary organization, RSDWP (Russian Social-Democratic Workers Party), the job that he was to do spectacularly well.
But in the process of doing that, he was chosen and empowered by the Keepers of Russia’s Destiny to do a much more valuable job for them, the job of completely destroying the old Russian order, the ‘first stage’ of the creation of a new Russian order, which Russia badly needed, in order to become revitalized and ready to keep doing her historical duty, that is, fulfilling her Third Rome Destiny.
Again, Leninism was a transitional phenomenon, whereas Stalinism was an institutional one. Leninism has often been mistakenly called idealistic, as opposed to Stalin’s realism, but such a distinction obfuscates the natures of both. In fact, there was nothing idealistic about Leninism. To repeat what I have already said, it was just a job which had to be done, which was done and which, after having been done, was retired, giving way to Stalinism.

Understanding Stalinism.
The Stalin phenomenon in Russian history is a multi-faceted, but by no means unique, national experience. More than anything else, it is one of the pinnacles of Russia’s brutal greatness, previously suffered with no lesser degree of violence under Peter the Great, but unlike the Stalin era, universally acknowledged as one of her finest hours. This is a double standard, of course, explainable only when we take into consideration the remoteness of Peter’s times, ensuring the silence of his victims, whereas so many of Stalin’s victims and many millions of their children are still alive and bearing a lifelong grudge.
Being a multi-faceted phenomenon, and having a direct effect on almost everything that I have to say both as a historian and as a political scientist, it is no wonder that Stalin and Stalinism are frequent guests on these pages, and practically in every section too. My personal unique and most valuable contribution to historical thought is inseparable from the effect which Stalin has had on my family, on my own life and on my thinking.
It is, therefore, absolutely impossible to bring everything on Stalin and Stalinism into one section, let alone into a single entry. Nor is it possible to avoid repetitions and thematic overlapping. I shall not even try. I am therefore advising the reader to understand Stalinism in my interpretation not on the basis of a single entry, such as this, but on the aggregate of everything that I have written on the subject.
In particular, I am referring the reader to my Contradiction, Religion, and Collective sections, where most of the subjects raised in this entry have been examined from a variety of angles. The History section is replete with similar themes as well, but there the emphasis is clearly on the historical angle. All together, they are, hopefully, making up a rich bouquet of relevant thoughts, in support of the same, critically important idea.
I have just said it twice, but it is well worth repeating this many more times, that there is a chasm separating Lenin and Leninism from Stalin and Stalinism. Leninism was transitional, while Stalinism was institutional. Stalin was an heir of Peter the Great, whereas Lenin was not.
The difference between them is by no means that of between a destroyer and a creator. Peter was both, and so was Stalin. Lenin was a brilliant nihilist, agitator, and organizer of the flux. He was also the undisputed father of the mobilizational one-party principle, the tree with one top. But otherwise he was totally unfit to govern. He was an agent of change, which says it all. The institutions which he introduced in Soviet Russia were not up to par, and could not possibly survive the hard test of permanence. Stalin was to provide what Lenin could not.
My acknowledgment of Stalin’s statesmanship genius is historically objective. Stalin was the right man for the job of ruling Russia at that particular time, and Stalin’s power takeover in 1922 (sic!) was probably the best thing that could happen to Russia, considering that it was Stalin’s brutal buildup of Russia’s industrial and military might, conducted at an admittedly terrible cost, which was the only course capable of defeating the looming aggression of the almighty Nazi Germany.
Stalinist Russia was the embodiment of the Totalitarian State, to a greater extent than either Hitler’s Third Reich or Mussolini’s Restored Rome. After all, in the Clash of the Titans, Stalin’s Russia gained the upper hand in a spectacular fashion, and what better test of the durability of a totalitarian State can there be than a decisive military victory over its most powerful totalitarian rival?
A lot has been said about the brutality of the Soviet regime under Stalin in particular. I have already noted, on several previous occasions, that I am revolted and grieved by the unimaginable levels of violence and senseless cruelty exhibited by the Russians not only in the extraordinary times of their crises, but in ordinary times as well.
In that strictly humanitarian sense, I have no kind word to say either for Stalin, or for my native Russia. But then, have there been any other nations around, historically guiltless on that rather sticky point? Merry Olde England, the proud mother of Magna Carta with its habeas corpus, and of the infinitely pleasant Victorian Age, had been rather grotesquely vicious in trying to save her crumbling worldwide Empire, particularly in the Boer War. America the Beautiful has also been guilty of some pretty graphic R-rated state-sponsored violence over the years. And then, of course, the great nation of Germany, the ablest, the cleverest, and the most advanced among the nations of Europe, which went through a chilling period of unspeakable cruelty, viciousness, and all, during the same time as Stalin was ruling Russia with his fist of steel; and the fact that Stalin’s Russia won the war, whereas Hitler’s Germany lost it, reaches far beyond a simple condemnation of German Nazism, to the level of its utter historical refutation, demonstrating that everything that the German people were to suffer as a result of Hitler’s unbridled adventurism had been senseless and self-destructive. No Stalin’s critic can say the same of Stalin and his Russia. Vae victis!
…Speaking of vae victis, it is now time to bring our friend Nietzsche into the picture with another one of his great insights. Here is a passage from his Genealogie, which is remarkably relevant to the subject of Russia and Stalin, and to the real meaning of totalitarianism as such:
“Still retaining the criteria of prehistory (this prehistory is in any case present in all ages, or may always reappear), the community, too, stands to its members in that same vital basic relation, that of the creditor to his debtors. One lives in a community, enjoys the advantages of a communality… dwells protected, cared for, in peace and trustfulness, without fear of certain injuries and hostile acts to which the man outside, the ‘man without peace’ is exposed... since one has bound and pledged oneself to the community precisely with a view to injuries and hostile acts. What will happen if this pledge is broken? The community, disappointed creditor, will get what repayment it can, one may depend on that. The direct harm, caused by the culprit, is here a minor matter. The lawbreaker is a breaker of his contract and his word with the whole, in respect to the benefits and comforts of communal life of which he has hitherto had a share; the lawbreaker is a debtor who has not merely failed to make good the advantages and advanced payments bestowed on him, but has actually attacked his creditor: therefore he is not only deprived henceforth of all these advantages, which is fair,--- he is also reminded what these benefits are really worth. The wrath of a disappointed creditor, the community throws him back into the savage and outlaw state against which he has hitherto been protected, and now every kind of hostility may be vented upon him. Punishment at this level of civilization is simply a copy of the normal attitude toward a hated, disarmed, prostrated enemy, who has lost not only every right and protection, but all hope of quarter as well... Vae victis!” (Genealogy of Morals, 2nd Essay, Section 9).
This astonishing passage describes the very essence of totalitarianism, and provides a powerful insight into the nature of the ideal Stalinist society. Indeed, it is the community rule here, collective, not selective, not to be confused with the situation within the realm of the absolute rule which is selective, not collective. When Hobbes in Elements describes sedition as a crime physically damaging to absolutism, he is right, inasmuch as a community where the ruler’s authority is challenged by ambitious detractors is splintered and may not even survive intact the resulting damage, as Cromwell’s opposition to the king proved so dramatically, on Hobbes’s watch. But Nietzsche claims that in the case he is describing here ‘the direct harm caused by the culprit is a minor matter.’ The community is hardly threatened by its offender in a physical sense, because, unlike in the case of absolute monarch, it does not split, but, on the contrary, unites against the perpetrator. But the offense is shocking in a psychological sense, and also with regard to its social, or rather, anti-social implications. “The lawbreaker is a breaker” of the trust, of the social contract. His greatest offense is that it contradicts the very logic of the totalitarian society, and it defies common sense. Ironically, totalitarianism does seek legitimacy in common sense. The state and society provide their citizens with such benefits and comforts in exchange for their good behavior and honest effort to benefit their benefactor (in Nietzsche’s words, the debtor must seek in good faith to repay his debt to the creditor), that any challenge to such an accommodation becomes an offense of first magnitude.
My allusion to Stalinist society is most appropriate here. Stalin was not an absolute ruler in the Hobbesian sense of an individual making his will the law of the land. Totalitarianism as embodied in Stalinism, or in the sense Hegel conceptualized it, was the rule of the State over its citizens. Even though Stalin ultimately spoke for the State, he did not impose his individuality on the nation. On the contrary (and the distinction here is extremely subtle, but crucial!), the great leader himself becomes the humblest of servants to the State and to the society. As long as this is the case, the community should have no desire to dislodge him, for he, in his own bizarre and one may say absurd way, is an exemplary citizen of the state and not some monstrous abomination.
If I am permitted to sound unpleasant (which is certainly the prerogative of anyone who harbors no hope of getting published due to the great accumulation of other unpublishable offences to the extent that one extra transgression should not make a difference), I must say that the current state of Russian scholarship in the United States, to an even greater extent than what the state of Soviet studies used to be, leaves much to be desired. Whether this is sheer ignorance or an evil design (see my Russia Article on this subject) is beside the point. The fact remains that every single Kremlin watcher these days salivates over how much personal power President Putin will have to accumulate in order to stay in power, as if it has ever been the question of personal power, like in an autocracy, that determined the leader’s longevity. Totalitarian rule differs from authoritarianism in that the longevity in question is decided by the system which rejects the absolutism of an individual at the top as much as it rejects any social nonconformity exhibited by the lesser citizens including even the least important ones. I shall develop this line of thought to a greater length and depth when I finally sit down to connect the pieces, or rather to tie together all different threads into one. But, before leaving this fragment, I must strenuously reiterate that I am by no means trying to giving any kind of positive evaluation to the totalitarian phenomenon. Yet, I still insist on the latter’s social legitimacy in principle. Totalitarianism is the epitome of democracy; whether it works or not in practice is an altogether different matter.
Returning now to Stalin’s historical legitimacy and effectiveness as a great ruler in the cruel, but authentic Russian tradition, I am repeating what I said before in other places that the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 was successful only insofar as it had cleared the way for Stalin, with the whole concept of the evolving Soviet State epitomized in Stalin-the-Seminarist, whose peculiar vision of Marxism combined the historical magnetism of the untamed Russian Buntar, the Rebel, with the shrewd calculation of the stern, moralizing Orthodox Priest.

The Man Who Destroyed The Soviet Union.
Having read this entry, don’t get me wrong! I am not ascribing the “destruction” of the USSR to a mindless tactical ploy of an autocratic samodur. It was not up to Nikita Sergeevich Khrushchev or anybody else to do this job. Once again, la Forza del Destino was at work. Sooner or later, the USSR was to become dead skin, to be shed, and in this sense Khrushchev became a tool of historical destiny, preparing the way for what was to follow some three decades later.
Stalinism was the thirty-year apotheosis of the Soviet period of Russian history. Stalin built the foundation of Russia’s socialist-totalitarian society, and for a fairly long while his machine would be able to run on its own, regardless of the inadequate strengths and glaring weaknesses of its successive machinists. None of Stalin’s Soviet successors was a totalitarian in the true sense of the word. The best they could do was to let the machine go on its own. The worst they did was to undermine its smooth run, which happened twice in the last forty years of the Soviet Union, once right after Stalin’s death, and again at the close of the Soviet era.
The last person to do irreparable damage to the Soviet machine was Mikhail Gorbachev. It was Gorbachev who actually signed the fatal document dissolving the USSR and indeed he richly deserves the dishonorable title of wrecking ball, which I have bestowed on him. It can be therefore naturally assumed that he was the man who destroyed the Soviet Union, but this is not so.
The Soviet Union was a totalitarian state, and Stalin, the consummate totalitarian, had understood the nature of totalitarianism better than anybody. In a conversation with his son Vasili, Stalin showed his displeasure with Vasili throwing the name of Stalin around: “Do not call yourself Stalin,” he told him. “You have no right to this name. Even I do not own it, either. Stalin is Russia; it’s Soviet power, it is not a person’s name, but a national symbol!”
Totalitarianism is always huge on national symbols, and in this sense the Soviet Union was far more than its material, legal, administrative and such form, which was, indeed, what Gorbachev would actually demolish. But, first and foremost, the USSR was a symbol, a living soul, and that soul had been destroyed long before Gorbachev had even surfaced on the Soviet political scene.
The man who really-really destroyed the Soviet Union, that is, the man who mortally wounded the soul of the Soviet colossus was… Nikita Khrushchev. He did it without as much as realizing what he was doing, in the heat of a fierce power struggle of him against the whole Politburo, by attacking the Stalin legend, as an instrument of achieving his narrow purpose (yes, he was a consummate authoritarian, with no understanding of nor appreciation for Russian totalitarianism).
By attacking the name of Stalin, by destroying his posthumous personality cult, Khrushchev undermined the very foundation of Russia’s totalitarian ideal. Leonid Brezhnev, who would later follow him, later still Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko were all uninspired totalitarians at the time when Russia’s totalitarian dream called for another ‘Stalin,’ a genius leader who alone could repair the damage done by Khrushchev to it. But, alas, no such man was coming, and the Soviet Union was doomed…
Ever since Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin, the Soviet system had become the dead skin needed to be shed by the Russian Snake. The skin was cast off by Mikhail Gorbachev’s decree, but Russia was too weak still, without an authentic totalitarian leader. Boris Yeltsin was, of course, a smaller version of Khrushchev: a petty authoritarian despot with no understanding or appreciation of Russia’s totalitarian need... But then came Vladimir Putin and brought back the totalitarian magic. Putin, in a sense, is Russia’s next Stalin.

Filling In The Blank.
The Brezhnev era started with a mild repudiation of Khrushchev’s absolutist “personality cult,” with little if any appreciation of the fact that the so-called troika of Brezhnev, Podgorny and Kosygin was contrary to the basic principle of the Soviet totalitarian system. Eventually, however, the system was bound to make the necessary adjustment, with Podgorny being fired from the “President’s” post, and Kosygin dutifully fading to a secondary, functionary role. Thus, Brezhnev alone was left to fill in the necessary blank, and today, as he is remembered with nostalgia as the last semi-permanent fixture of the golden old days of Soviet-styled socialism in Russia, he is, perhaps, given more personal credit than what is due to him for the reason that it was not his own achievement that the system was somehow still functioning under him, even though in an erratic fashion, but it was rather the achievement of the system’s inertia that it was still functioning while he, Brezhnev, was just a man filling in the blank.
There was a lot of negativity and derision in my attitude toward Brezhnev in those years. I was appalled by his grotesque personal appearance, a bloated, seemingly diseased man (although the latter impression had to be wrong, since Brezhnev was able to live out a long life, after all), not a promising image of a great leader of a great nation. Perhaps, he was symbolic of the condition of the whole Soviet system, which looked sick, but somehow managed to hang on. Thus the question of how long the Soviet system could keep running on inertia, before it would run out of steam, had to be the most pertinent one to address to the Brezhnev era. Today, even I myself have changed my mind about Leonid Ilyich, as I nostalgically compare his “good old times” to the hell that broke loose under Gorbachev and Yeltsin. But, to be honest, the Soviet system had been terminally ailing ever since Khrushchev stabbed it in the back, and it was not up to Brezhnev, or anyone else, to put Humpty-Dumpty together again, since the fall of the USSR was now only a question of time.

The Twelve Commandments Of Soviet Communism.
Before we move on from here to Comrade Gorbachev, and to the last days of the Soviet Union, a brief stop on the way is in order. At issue is the question of morality, and how it was addressed in Soviet times.
The position of the Russian Orthodox Church on morality and politics, both before the Bolshevik takeover and throughout the Soviet era, forcefully reaffirmed in the presently existing post-Soviet duumvirate of the State and the Church, has been that among the freedoms granted to individuals within society, there can be no such thing as freedom of immorality. Maintaining the highest possible moral standards, and suppressing amoral behavior, therefore, ought to be the policy of the State, trumping all freedoms and privileges granted to the citizens. It is difficult to imagine of course that even the most intrusive State can eradicate immorality altogether, but when the Church and the State jointly put a stigma on depravity it will be safe to assume that immorality will be essentially limited to a smaller part of hopelessly wicked persons, and would not become a standard of acceptable behavior, which the young might want to emulate as a result of peer pressure.
Today’s Russia, despite the newly forged duumvirate of Church and State, indulges in revolting excesses of depravity, which will hopefully some day soon be officially condemned and suppressed. But so far, this has not happened, and it is, therefore, all the more amazing how well the official State policy of moral behavior in public and private life used to be sustained, in spite of all the shortcomings and failings of the later years, during the years of Soviet power.
As I was growing up in Moscow, there were always very rigid rules of behavior, which the citizens, young and old, were obligated to follow. When I was thirteen, in 1961 the 22nd Congress of the Communist Party of the USSR codified such rules as part of a newly adopted Program of the CPSU. This document received the name Moral Code of the Builder of Communism.
It was a set of twelve moral principles, the observance of which was not limited just to the members of the Communist Party and of the Komsomol, but was expected to be followed by all Soviet citizens. These rules were generally benign, which I intend to demonstrate promptly in my comments to each of them, as I will be quoting them one by one. But, before I do, a general observation is in order.
This Moral Code has been compared to the Ten Commandments of the Bible, with some justification. The familiar basic elements of Christian morality are virtually hiding their religious identity behind the official language of the Code, which is still much gentler than the standard Soviet gobbledygook of the rest of the Party Program. Presently, we shall see the evidence of that, in my comments. Another point is the number twelve, which cannot possibly be a coincidence, as the Russians have never been indifferent to symbolism, senior Soviet officials never to be excluded. The number twelve has a very special mystical meaning, as we cannot fail to see, for instance, in Alexander Blok’s celebrated long poem The Twelve. (Be mindful also that Russia uses the metric system of measurements, and the number ten is generically more to be expected.)
Aside from the traditional symbolic values of twelve, and its Christian significance as the set number of the Apostles of Christ, the Russians who opt to show off a certain religious sophistication, like to point out the fact that Jesus has given us Two Commandments of His own, adding them up to Twelve. But an even finer point would be to indicate that the Ten Commandments of the Old Testament are not exactly ten, when we start counting them. (If we wish, we could easily count twelve there, too!) As an additional and convincing proof of the amazing ambiguity of the number ten the in Ten Commandments, the Jews and the Christians cannot not agree between themselves as to which are the Ten Commandments, and accordingly count them quite differently!
But enough of that talk about symbolism. Here are the Twelve Commandments of Soviet Communism, the Moral Code of the Builder of Communism, reproduced here with my comments:
The Moral Code of the Builder of Communism:
1. Dedication to the cause of Communism, love of the socialist Motherland and of the socialist countries.
The first impression that this commandment is grossly politicized and filled with ideology is misleading. It is indeed squarely ideological, in promoting the socialist principles of social organization, but otherwise, it is much more conservative in its essence: Dedication to the cause of Communism means being committed to the policies of the State; love of the socialist Motherland demands patriotism (love of country) and also an adherence to the socialist principles of Soviet society; love of the socialist countries means a support of the nations who are on our side in the global confrontation between the forces of socialism and capitalism.
2. Conscientious labor for the good of society: he who does not work, does not eat.
Compare this to 2 Thessalonians 3:10: This we commanded you that if any would not work, neither should he eat. There is hardly any other meaning to look for here, except what this passage plainly demonstrates, namely, its unambiguous spiritual affinity with the morality of Christianity.
3. Concern on the part of each for the preservation and growth of public property.
The very legitimate concern of the State over the property of the State becomes a moral obligation of each of its citizens, not only precluding theft and misuse, but demanding an active role in its regular maintenance and improvement. There is little disagreement here between totalitarian and free societies. Public property is to be respected everywhere.
4. High sense of public duty; intolerance of actions harmful to the public interest.
The questions of civic duty and the common good are stated here as general moral principles, which is also an accepted principle in all civilized societies.
5. Collectivism and comradely mutual assistance: one for all and all for one.
Camaraderie and mutual assistance are of course staple Christian principles. Also, collectivism comes out here as patriotism in its specific manifestation, as opposed to the general slogans and practices, such as the formulation of the First Principle above. In fact, ## 1 and 5 are mutually complementary.
6. Humane relations and mutual respect between persons: man is to man a friend, comrade, and brother.
If this is not a more elaborate rewording of Christ’s Love thy neighbor, I do not know how else to interpret it. Incidentally, the second part of this sentence is a linguistic refutation of the Russian saying Man to man is a wolf (obviously derived from the Latin saying Homo homini lupus est, attributed by Plautus).
7. Honesty and truthfulness, moral purity, unpretentiousness and modesty in social and private life.
All of these articles of personal conduct are superlatively commendable principles of Christian life. Oddly enough, this call for personal humility and denial of ostentation is consistent with socialist egalitarianism and Christian communal life, exposing a deep and wide chasm between these ethical laws, and Capitalist ethics, which thrives on the drive to success at any price, and on ostentation, which shows off the fruits of success.
8. Mutual respect in the family, care for the upbringing of children.
Soviet society prized strong families and good parenting to the extent that common adultery was seen as a much greater danger to society than, say, homosexuality of unmarried individuals. There is a forceful irony in the allegations of Western propaganda about the plight of Soviet children, relinquished by their parents from an early age to the custody of Soviet ideologues and indoctrinators. Perhaps, these insinuations were drawn from a blueprint of the kibbutz life in modern Israel, but one thing can be certain. With their focus on the integrity of the family and freedom from immorality, the Soviet authorities made certain that the life of children would be a happy one, and from a personal comparison of the two experiences, in Russia and the United States, I can declare in good conscience that Russian children and Russian families were generally much better off, even in bad times, than the American children and their families are today.
9. Intolerance of injustice, parasitism, dishonesty, careerism, and profiteering.
This rule is an unequivocal repudiation of the capitalist way of life. The word injustice here means social injustice, that is, when people are cutting themselves a bigger slice of the cake than what they have earned by their labor. Parasitism means living off public funds, or illegally obtained private funds, without doing their share of work to promote the public good. Dishonesty is making a living by improper means. As for the words careerism and profiteering, they directly point to the two main principles of capitalist thinking: the drive to succeed at all costs, and the spirit of private enterprise.
10. Friendship and brotherhood among all peoples of the USSR, intolerance of national and racial hatred.
This principle is self-explanatory, and, again, it is natural for all multicultural, multiethnic, and multiracial civilized societies.
11. Intolerance towards the enemies of communism, peace, and freedom of the nations.
This is not only a denunciation of all enemies of the Soviet nation, but also a repudiation of all contrarian ideologies, which is mainly the capitalist ideology
12. Fraternal solidarity with the working people of all nations, and with all peoples.
This last principle balances out the preceding one, in the sense that the Love of your neighbor principle goes beyond the national borders of the USSR, extending to all honestly working wage earners of all nations. It is not extended, however, to the governments and individuals who are sworn enemies of the USSR, nor to the enemy ideologies and their ideologues, as the Eleventh Principle states, but, again, intolerance towards the enemies is not projected from the few to the whole nation. All these principles were promoted in the USSR long before 1961, and the quick recognition of good Germans versus evil Germans led to the establishment of the friendly country GDR, in the aftermath of World War II, in spite of the deep hatred of Nazi Germany and, presumably, of every living German during the war.
I am foreseeing an angry rebuttal to my commentary on the part of Russia’s perennial critics, and, in such a case, it will be almost valid. How can you regard this so-called “moral code,” they will argue, as anything but cheap propaganda and dissimulation? To which I can only rejoin that when good Christian principles are adopted as the nation’s moral code, there is nothing intrinsically wrong with that. On the contrary, the rules of good ethical conduct, when taken at face value, can only be beneficial to society, even if its defects in the practicality of everyday life are severe and glaringly obvious.

Ubi Venisti, Gorbachev?
“Quo vadis, Gorbachev?” was the question of my provocative 1987 article (published by the Marin Independent Journal and carried by the Gannett newswire), musing on the impending course of Russia under her new leadership, glasnost and perestroika, and all. “Ubi venisti?” ought to be the question asked twenty years later.
As much as Mikhail Gorbachev has been lauded in the West for ridding the free world of its worst enemy, the Soviet Union, he is maligned and cursed in his own country, deservedly, no doubt, for condemning the great superpower nation to global humiliation in its astounding fall from greatness, and for bringing upon many millions of its unsuspecting citizens the incredible miseries of the horrid Yeltsin era. The collapse of the USSR has been called, in retrospect, by all Russian patriots, Vladimir Putin included, Russia’s “greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the twentieth century,” and, considering that the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, with the terrible Civil War ensuing, plus the devastating Great War (WWI), and the even more devastating World War II, all happened in the same twentieth century as well, that is really saying a lot!
How and why did he, Gorbachev, come to such a bitter ruination of his great nation, and to such a horrible verdict on his own historical legacy? Some call it a dreadful miscalculation, as if there were anything there to miscalculate! As if the terminal act of dissolving the USSR were not, in itself, a conscious act of national suicide, as if the actor performing it had no idea, not just of the consequences, but of the direct significance of what he was doing!
No, this was not some unfortunate miscalculation, but a deliberate and willful subversion of the system that had been in place for three quarters of a century, but now, apparently, was no longer of use. And Comrade Gorbachev, with all his powers at the helm, could not have done it alone.
How was it done? Some say, it was glasnost and perestroika gone too far. Nonsense! The greatest tragedy of the twentieth century was not an excess of glasnost and perestroika, but the act of the dissolution of the Soviet Union, which alone opened the Pandora’s box of horrors. Thus, it was not a gradual process, but one single act of putting the official signature of one properly authorized government official to the document straightforwardly declaring to the nation and to the world that the once mighty and seemingly indestructible Union of Soviet Socialist Republics was now officially dead.
Why was it done? Not because a Mikhail Sergeyevich Gorbachev had willed it, in some personal psychotic episode, nor because he had somehow been planning for something else, but wretchedly miscalculated. In Bakuninian terms, the collapse of the USSR was the conscious act of total and complete destruction, for the purpose of a new creation. And, in the words of my old family friend, the late Professor Anatoly Ivanovich Zimin (in his mystical explanation of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution), the eternal Russian snake was getting too old and too tired, and it was time to shed the old skin, and, with the new skin, to become young again.

Russian Democrat American Style.
Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin has been dead for nearly four years already. De mortuis aut bene aut nihil! But I have no kind words for him, nor can I remain silent. The eightieth anniversary of his birth will be celebrated in Russia in a couple of days, and so here is my mercifully short epitaph which I am laying on his tombstone on this occasion:
Here lies “Boris-vodka-Yeltsin” who made Russia’s enemies laugh while she was weeping. May God be his judge.

The Best And The Brightest.
Those who say that Vladimir Putin burst (or sneaked) onto the Russian national stage out of nowhere may need to have their expert credentials checked. He comes highly recommended out of the most prestigious school of modern Russia’s political talent, the KGB.
Many years ago, twenty-seven, to be exact, I had a talk about the KGB with some Reagan Administration officials. Scions of prominent Soviet families, I explained to them, have their high-status niches within the State nomenclature carved out for them, whereas any person of non-specific talent without such important family ties sees their opportunity to succeed in society by joining the KGB. Thus, the KGB is not exactly a sinister organization of plainclothes policemen, spies and snitches, but the ultimate talent school in all of Russia, the place to be for the best and the brightest.
I am sure that if my revelation to Washington opened any new eyes, it was more on account of their prior failure to grasp such a basic concept, than on account of my words being a genuine eye-opener.
With regard to Putin coming out of the shadows, when he did, I might add that at that particular time, with all Russia in disarray, the KGB (or FSB, if you like the new sound of its name) was the one and only place in the country (with the possible exception of Russia’s Strategic Forces), where good patriotic minds could still function in good conscience, as keepers of Russia’s security, and ensurers of continuity in those highly volatile and dangerous times.
After eight years of the Putin Presidency one might safely say that he was one of the best and the brightest among that elite club of the best and the brightest, and discovering him, and entrusting to him the reins of the Kremlin power was an enlightened decision, for which, as I said before, Boris Yeltsin cannot take any credit.
The main accomplishment of Mr. Putin is that he understands the nature of Russia’s totalitarian mentality and its main requirement of Russia’s Leader. Like Stalin, he has to be an incorruptible man, with no regard for luxury, and no love for money, and for whatever money can buy. Like Stalin, he has to be a totalitarian, which is the direct opposite of authoritarian. The latter seeks to make the State the tool of his desires, as he imposes his will upon the State. The totalitarian fashions himself into the most reliable tool of the State, and sheds all personal ambitions and desires, submitting himself to the will of the State, and identifying himself with that will.
So far, Putin has managed to restore much of Russia’s self-confidence and self-respect, and he is definitely responsible for the dramatic improvement of Russia’s great-power image in the West, although America is still in a state of denial, concerning her cold war adversary’s forceful reemergence on the world stage. But will it be enough to undo all the seemingly irreversible damage done to the nation? After all, capitalism is still quite active in the country, currently counting more billionaires, according to the Forbes List, than at least a hundred capitalist nations of the world combined. And although a lot has been done to alleviate the suffering of the poor, the Russian poor are still suffering like they never did in Soviet times, and that same disparity between the rich and the poor that used to be the staple of Soviet anti-Capitalist propaganda, is a somber fact of life in Russia today.