Nikolai Svanidze

Historian, journalist and public figure

When the outlines are heavy and the smoke will dissipate, and it will be possible to calmly and academic, already with some historical distance to reflect the current disaster, one of the main directions of this reflection will not even be a characteristic of the current Russian regime (everything is clear with it), but the answer to the question: where did he come from? Where did this Z come from, which so fully expresses it? And then we will have to go into a retrospective, and a rather deep one. It will be necessary to recall Bolshevism and Russian fascism.

Russian fascism appeared simultaneously with Bolshevism and even a little earlier. Back in the 90s of the 19th century, the gendarme-Black-Hoiled fake called the “Protocols of the Zion sages” was born. Decades later, the radically right -wing anti -Semitic part of Russian emigration through Rosenberg delivered this brochure to Hitler, and he was captured by it.

And the speeches and articles of Vladimir Purishkevich, the head of the Union of Mikhail Arkhangel, and Nikolai Markov, the head of the Union of the Russian People, could well be later published in the main Nazi body of Völkischer Beobachter <German newspaper, since 1920, the Printing authority of the NSDAP - The Insider> with a warm commentary Goebbels.

In the early Bolshevik environment, anti -Semitism was impossible. However, anti -Semitism is the most convex and monstrous, but not the only sign of even German Nazism, not to mention Italian fascism, more indifferent to the Jewish question. Here's what he said in 1921 in the Italian parliament, addressing the Communists, the father of fascism Benito Mussolini:

“There is no political kinship between us and the Communists, but there is intellectual. Like you, we consider it necessary to be a centralized and single state, requiring iron discipline from all, with the only difference being that you come to this conclusion through the concept of classes, and we are through the concept of a nation. ”

Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler

The wonderful thinker of the Russian abroad George Fedotov already in the late 30s writes:

“Bolshevism is a culture of totalitarian anger. Russia is the most consistent country of fascism. Do not forget that Lenin was the inventor of this state uniform, which Mussolini and Hitler borrowed from him. And the social content of Moscow fascism is no different from German. ”

Georgy Fedotov echoes the largest Russian intellectual philosopher Nikolai Berdyaev:

“Stalinism, that is, communism of the construction period, is reborn into a kind of Russian fascism. He has all the features of fascism: a totalitarian state, state capitalism, nationalism, leadership and, as a basis, militarized youth. ”

Stalinism is reborn into a kind of Russian fascism

Note that all this was written before the start of World War II. There were no Nazi gas stoves, and the authors knew little about the scale of the Stalinist repressions. But it is precisely the unprecedented state terror, although somewhat multidirectional, - the factor, undoubtedly, bringing two regimes closer. The regime is undoubtedly related.

No wonder the Foreign Minister Ribbentrop, after a party in Moscow, which noted the signing of a non -aggression pact, wrote that he felt in the company of Soviet leaders as if in the company of old party comrades. The flair did not deceive Ribbentrop: the spirit of rigid caste, party sectarianism and nomenclature was common.

Banquet in Moscow after signing the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, 1939.

There were, of course, stylistic differences. The massive propaganda of Nazi Germany was frank and naked cannibalist. And in the Soviet Union - more hypocritical (by the definition of A.I. Solzhenitsyn), hiding the true essence behind the beautiful phrases about equality and justice.

There was another difference - foreign policy. The Nazi regime was more nursing and adventure, prone to the game of Va-Bank. Stalin - more careful and leisurely. Apparently, from the false sense of the inevitability of his historical victory.

These are stylistic details, but they are quite interesting. It should be added that late, post -war Stalinism picked up the banner of state anti -Semitism from the defeated Hitler. He stained the processes of the late 40s and the beginning of the 50s. They walked in growing, and only the death of Stalin put the limit to them. Although not so fierce, but quite visible traces of state anti -Semitism remained in the USSR until its fall.

Bolshevism, this domestic version of totalitarianism, is a severe hereditary disease. Moreover, there was no treatment, but rehabilitation was refused.

Say right away, there is no anti -Semitism today. But all the signs listed by Nikolai Berdyaev are present. They are plused by the non-alternative all-pervasive state spag and repressions, which gradually cease to be point and soft and resemble the quality of court decisions and sentences of the 30-50s of the last century.

Now there is also a war. The war with Ukraine, but in fact - with the West. Hatred to the West, total, civilizational, cultural confrontation to him is generally the theme of a special conversation. He was noted by the Hitler Nazism, who saw in the West the focus of black Jewish evil, and Bolshevism, for which the West was classily hostile and doomed to historical defeat the world of capital. Both modes claimed to transform the world in their image and likeness. Both were the messianic and aggressive. Both put on the expansion of the territories.

In this sense, Bolshevism, by the way, is not original. It is based on the deepest historical tradition. Orthodox messianism is rooted in the 15th century to Ivan III and is fixed under Ivan the Terrible, extremely ideologically postulated under Nicholas I with the Uvarov theory of official nationality. And finally, the block -shaped Alexander III, revered now. All of them are the apostles of domestic anti -war.

The current Russian government chose this component from Russian history. I chose because anti -shipping is a state primacy over a person, it is the irremovability and innocence of power and this is the merger of power and property. The people in the form of a bonus get irresponsibility and comfortable neglect of the law, which is still not executed or executed selectively. Actually, this is where the public contract is being built: you are doing what you want, we approve, but we do not bear any responsibility.

Anti -Westernity - state primacy over a person, irremovability and uncontrolled power

For the completeness of the picture among the serfdom, Bolshevik and Germanic model of the 30s of traditions, a consistent course on anti-intellectualism and the simplification of the picture of the world should be called. Russian historian Sergei Solovyov on the reign of Nicholas I wrote that the enlightenment became a crime before the government. In the early 60s of the 20th century, the high party functionary Sergei Trapeznikov said that every thought ultimately has an anti-Soviet character. And how he looked into the water. That is why, in the conditions of totalitarianism, the authorities throw the simplest ideas and excites primitive feelings that work at the level of the subconscious. One of them is revenge.

It is known what a terrible, key role was played by revengeism in the history of the coming to power in Germany of the NSDAP. Then he grew out of the defeat in the First World War, begun, by the way, by Germany itself.

In the Russian modern history, the collapse of the USSR. And although he also fell apart, it turned out that from his collapse you can squeeze a lot of things. They squeezed the desire of the anti -Western revenge. Moreover, in the simplest, archaic and visual form - in the form of war.

But when a totalitarian state with decorative institutions and the same constitution, with a ban on freedom of speech and alternative information, with mass enthusiastic support of the population, begins a special military operation in a neighboring country, this inevitably causes heavy and completely defined historical associations. Purely aesthetically lacking only the visual symbol. And he naturally appears. And gives birth to the same associations.

We must pay tribute to those who came up with it: the sense of style did not change them. Gothic, sharp corners, brutality - what is necessary. This one of this sign Z is enough to realize what is happening in a historical context. Z, like the last letter in the Latin alphabet, means finality. I mean, the finality of decisions. In this case, the solution of the Ukrainian issue.

In the symbol Z - Gothic, sharp corners, brutality

Returning to the terrible regimes of the last century. Their main characteristic is not even the bloody arbitrariness of power, but a joyful mass militaristic psychosis. The delight, the euphoria of violence against strangers and their own, rudeness as power, empathy as weakness, rapid, in front of our eyes, mass degradation and extensions. All this is a social diagnosis and a harbinger of an inevitable catastrophe. We ourselves make our story.