PASSION FOR DESTRUCTION

(For much more on the Bakunin-Nietzsche connection, which is unrepresented here, and on how Nietzsche may have actually “borrowed” Bakunin’s “passion for destruction” see my entry Nietzsche the Bakuninian? in the Nietzsche section, to be posted later, and also the earlier entry Russia And Nietzsche, which has been posted.

Unlike what it may seem at first sight, this is not a history entry, but an intriguing trip into Russia’s national psychology, and, as such, there is no doubt that it belongs in this Russian section. Whenever history keeps repeating itself, it is no longer history but character coming to the forefront. Thus “passion for destruction” tells a lot not just about Russia’s past, but also about her present and her future.)

...This really-really scary aspect of the Russian national psyche: its ready acceptance and willing complicity in the large-scale national tragedies which have plagued Russia over the centuries, earning her the epithet of the long-suffering nation, is here under scrutiny again, this time under a different, Bakuninian angle.

Bakunin's life story reads like an action-adventure thriller, filled with daring struggles, luck and absence thereof, association with a most-wanted criminal, capture, imprisonment, escape, worldwide travel, with the police in pursuit, a wrestling match with no less than Karl Marx for control of Marx’s First International, plus a large collection of highly provocative writing, some still unpublished. But there is no point for me to retell his adventures. Believe me, Bakunin is worth it.

The circumstances of his life are either well-known to the reader, in which case there is no need to go over them again, or else, completely unknown, in which case the reader is advised to read more about him elsewhere, and, preferably, from a number of different sources, in order to form a composite picture, as most accounts of his life and work are rather inadequate in themselves.

(For the record, Bakunin ‘lost’ his bid for the control of the First International, and walked out, taking the host of his followers with him. As a result of his walkout, the said organization soon collapsed, and most of its leaders were forced to move to America, where their effort dwindled. A Pyrrhic victory for the victors, if you ask me…)

In this entry, however, I am concentrating on two foremost items of Bakunin’s legacy. One, is his passion for destruction, capsulated in the famous dictum: “The passion for destruction is also a creative passion.” Here is a passage from my book Stalin, and Other Family, where I comment on this momentous sentence:

"Returning to Russia from Australia in the late spring of 1917... Artem found her in disarray. The law had completely broken down, and armed bands of army deserters were let loose on the countryside, pillaging, raping, murdering people... And the earth was without form...
Artem was a Russian, and he thought like a Russian. In the midst of chaos, he was exhilarated and quoted the Scriptures. He was a witness to Creation in its earliest stage.

Artem was not alone in his thoughts. He had read the great Bakunin and found in him a kindred spirit. As befits a true Russian, he interpreted Bakunin in his own personal way which, I suspect, is the only way to interpret Bakunin correctly.

The first stage of Creation, according to Bakunin, is indeed a total and complete destruction. God did not take some worn-out world, and patch it up. He created out-of-nothing! Let there be darkness, and then, the Spirit of God will hover over you, and God will say, “Let there be Light,” and a new light will shine!
The Russians are an amazing people. They let loose Godlessness, in order to compare themselves to God!

In my own experience, I have found the Russian elite in perfect tune with my grandfather’s interpretation of Bakunin. Karl Marx comes and goes, but Bakunin always stays, because Bakunin is Russia."

Here, uncannily, but maybe not so unexpectedly, we can clearly hear Nietzsche, with his creator-creature cosmogony, and the concomitant passion for suffering, which is as great in destruction as in creation, and through that great suffering, the borderline between the destructive and constructive stages of creation has been erased, and these two stages are fused into one, and made indistinguishable.

The second largest item of Bakunin’s legacy is his glorification of the master criminal as the prime mover of progress, the gold reserve and the lifeblood of the nation. (Ironically, Bakunin’s criminal ideal was for some time personified in the real-life criminal Sergei Nechayev, but after a while, having been conned and robbed blind by his dangerous friend and hero, Bakunin could find nothing better than denounce Nechayev, but not his infatuation with the Russian master criminal as a generality.) Here is another excerpt from that same Stalin book, where I picture Stalin taking lessons from Bakunin’s ghost:

"Stalin always knew what he wanted. Before the Revolution, Lenin and most of the other Bolshevik leaders were all living abroad, separated from the “home base,” which they dared to represent. Stalin, on the other hand, made himself indispensable inside Russia. Disdainful of the ideologues in his own party who sought popularity among the industrial workers, or in those other parties who tried to appeal to the peasants, or to the intelligentsia, Stalin instinctively followed the counsel of whom else but the legendary Bakunin, whose keen understanding of Russia’s revolutionary potential was second to none.

It was Bakunin who saw the authentic power base of the successful revolutionist in his ties to the criminal underworld. Bakunin had named the criminals the best, most active, and most creative force, the lifeblood of the nation. To the dismay of his ignorant comrades, Stalin demolished the barrier between the politicals and the felons. He showed his respect to murderers and robbers, and they happily admitted him into their exclusive circle. Because he was a 'political,' they allowed him to become their 'Godfather.'”

My last reference to Godfather is, of course, another case of pandering to my American audiences, but it is done for the good cause of sharpening their associative reflexes thus bringing my point home to them with greatest clarity and distinction. But otherwise, it is all rather chilling, to realize that Russia’s national path to greatness is laid through grandscale destruction and terrible misery of her long-suffering people.

(Postscript. I suggest that the reader should not treat the subject of the State versus its Criminal Subworld too lightly. As a result of the collapse of the Tsarist order in 1917, at least a million-strong criminal army was released into the wild, and the matter of who would control whom was by no means a trivial matter. It was a huge boon for Stalin that he was in control, and when, in the run-up to, and during the Great Terror of the 1930’s, he destroyed all those criminals who had proved unruly, their large numbers further swelled the numbers of Stalin’s victims. Which goes a long way to corroborate my father General Artem’s perfectly logical point to the effect that one innocent victim’s tragic fate does not imply that ninety-nine guilty ones had been unjustly punished.

On a related matter, these days there have been insinuations that Putin’s-Medvedev’s Russia has become a mafia state, further implying that the Russian government is actually running the Russian criminal empire. It is no secret, I will argue, that mafia-type organizations exist in every country, with varying degrees of influence on the affairs of the state. One might safely assume, however, that for the health of the state, it is better for the government to control the mafia than the other way around… Thus, incidentally, three cheers for the American Government being able to put the American Mafia to good use in World War II…

But all this and more will be the subject of a whole different entry, to be posted later.)