Coming from the tradition of monarchism, I was amazed to read the text of Col. Tomasz Jankowski "Understanding the specificity of Russian sentiment". Surprised, because, in fact, most of him came to my mind. If I were to object to this statement, it would be alternatively not what was in it, but what was missing from it.
Complexity of Communist Experience
The fact is, of course, as Thomas noted, that the Bolsheviks protected Russia from falling into full economical dependence on the West. Communist Russia (and neighbouring Russia – within the framework of the USSR and at its borders – communist satellite states) were a separate economic-world system, which was not flooded by any of the waves of economical crises that regularly sank capitalist countries. In fact, there is simply a common consensus between historians and politicians.
Another issue is the assessment of this strategy and the balance of its profits and losses. Anti-communists usually only include a column in which costs are calculated, which is, of course, a distortion of the image of the historical experience of communism. However, this undeniable abuse does not invalidate, of course, the overall negative balance of communism, which negatively verified past itself – the communist strategy itself collapsed under the weight of its own economic, political, ideological and civilizational failure.
The economical criticism of russian communism is well known: replacing the price determined by the supply-demand mechanics by the price determined by central planning, the criterion of balancing needs and material costs was eliminated, which must have resulted in waste and shortages at the same time, which the russian strategy was truly celebrated for. However, I did not want to draw attention to this dimension of russian communism.
Russian Statocracy
Thomas ignores his political dimension completely in his speech, to which I, as a monarch, am peculiarly sensitive. Well, most historical analyses (e.g. B. Zientara) and geopolitical analyses (e.g. L. Gumilov) indicate the importance of strong central power to preserve the regulation of the Eurasian space, in the fresh past occupied by the Russian Empire.
In Russia's history, it is pointed to the formational impact of the experiences of Varean (Norman School) and Mongolian (Eurasian School) on the education of strong state power, whose thought is alternatively alien by nature to its matriarchal and anarchist Slavic peoples. It was the Vikings who gave the Russian a state-creation impulse, while the Mongols later gave the imperial impulse to Moscow.
This is why the transcontinental empire grew over time around Moscow, not around Kiev or Warsaw. As it turned out in time, it was the only European empire that survived the trial of time (although, perhaps, we are just witnessing the beginning of its decay process). Russia has besides proved to be the only Slavic state that has maintained comparative independency towards the West and the last European state that inactive retains comparative geopolitical and civilizational independency from the US.
Communist Democracy
What is the Bolshevik experience like on this background? In fact, his assessment was made by the Russians themselves, specifically the current president of the country Vladimir Putin, and Thomas should not ignore this in his speech, due to the fact that we are not dealing with teaching from the outside of the Russians what they should be to be good Russians (which truly looks rather absurd), but with faithful reporting of the voices of the historical debate conducted by the Russians themselves.
On the political level, the main problem of communism, which for me – as a individual increasing out of the monarchist tradition – is peculiarly clear, is the fact that it was democratic. Through his democratism, he opposed the political dimension of the “Russian ideology” cumulative the country's historical experience. Democratic communism destroyed the authoritarian social and political structures of Eurasia, thus disorganizing the Russian empire, which ultimately, after respective decades, led to its decomposition and partial disintegration.
This is what Vladimir Putin spoke about in relation to laziness, Bolshevikism, and in part even Stalinism. Of course, liberal Democrats point out that the power of Lenin and Stalin was in practice totalitarian and centralised. This is true, and that is most likely why the Russian empire in the form of russian Russia and the russian Union and the Warsaw Pact did not break up immediately, but only after respective decades. Nevertheless, as Vladimir Putin pointed out, organization conditions for the disintegration of political unity were created by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, Stalin did not destruct them.
Let us remember that before Wilson's Thirteen Points was Lenin's Declaration of the Rights of the Nations. What the Germans claimed to be Russia's enemies, the Bolsheviks institutionalized in it as its ruler. The thought of a nation is simply a modern, western, anti-traditional and alien thought of Eurasia. Instilled in it, it must lead to its political disorganization. That is why Anne Applebaum wanted “more nationalism” in Ukraine and Western liberal Democrats have no opposition to supporting even neo-Nazi forms of nationalism in the Eurasian space.
Powerfulness
Eurasia can only hold its subjectivity if it is politically united under the power of an integrated political centre. specified a centre may be internally integrated if it is personalised. Multi-head organisms are inherently incapable of life, due to the fact that individual components of multi-head management always act centrifugally. This trend is peculiarly exacerbated in vast countries inhabited by many different peoples – and that is Russia.
Russia, which organises the political Eurasian space to keep its subjectivity, cannot so be democratic. The political empowerment of the peoples of Eurasian space as “nations” means political fragmentation of this space, which can only be gained by external centres of force. The political entity of Eurasia is possible under the conditions of its political unification by an internally integrated (one-person) centre of power standing above the individual peoples of this space.
In another words, Russia must have authoritarian power. This means authority (ruler), whose authority would be entrusted to peoples surviving in Eurasian space. This means an imperial formula, or 1 in which the sovereign is an authoritarian ruler who rules over lands and peoples who is able to order. The imperial expression correspondes naturally to the single-powerful formula, opposed to the polarally national and democratic formula. In the imperial and only-powerful formulas, the authority is the self-governor, and in the national and democratic formula, the people-nations (in the case of countries vast spatially like Russia—many peoples-nations, each of whom “will go their way”).
Communism Against Russia
The republican-national-democratic expression means the dissolution of Russia, so political-territorial disintegration of Eurasia and subjugation of more or little extended areas of Eurasian external forces. Institutional-systemic-ideological bases of this were prepared in Eurasia by communists, mastering the Moscow political center of the Russian empire. Fighting present against the "collection of Russian lands" by Moscow for national self-determination Ukrainians are, as Vladimir Putin rightly pointed out, another echo of the fatal Bolshevik experiment.
However, the most crucial case of Ukraine is not exhausting, of course, the problem of the heritage of communism in Russia, due to the fact that the national thought has previously taken distant from it another russian republics, in most cases before the Bolshevik revolution this thought is completely unreprising (e.g. Belarus, Kazakhstan) or reprising comparatively small (e.g. Azerbaijan). The national thought implanted by the communists besides shakes the foundations of the Russian Federation itself, threatening its disintegration or trusion into the Russian cultural area. In the early 20th century, Finland and the Baltic States were separated. The same Western national and republican-democratic thought prevented Poles from interacting with the Russians and indirectly prevented all Slavs and peoples of east Europe from being united in 1 Empire of the East (which F. Tiutchev wrote about).
Feeding Bolshevism on Eurasian natives
Thus Tomasz Jankowski is right, writing that the russian historical experience of Eurasia should be seen comprehensively and multidimensionally. In fact, he besides accurately explains why the Russians value them, due to the aspects of this experience he mentioned. I would say even more: The October Revolution, in all its good and bad aspects, was an Eurasian revolution, but besides a mostly Russian and Slavic revolution. The folk, patriotic factor, first present in the war against intervention and later in the large Patriotic War, besides contained a clear component in the form of a "self-defence reaction" of the Russian people ("superetnos of the East", speaking Gumilev), which can be classified as much as in relation to its socio-economic and civilisational condition as the civilization-ethnic state.
Such a comprehensive and multidimensional view of the communist phenomenon, and even simply a faithful study of the discussions on it conducted present in Russia, requires besides taking into account the fact that in political terms, communism was an imposition on the peoples of Eurasia, including, of course, the Russian peoples, alien to Western modernity in the form of democratic Marxist ideology – even if the Bolsheviks, as part of the implementation of Marxism in Eurasia, preyed on the disastrous burden on the Russians in the form of appropriate Slavs of anarchist predilections, or political and cultural traditions of another peoples of Eurasia.
This 1 enlisted in Eurasia, in its Marxist variety, Western modernism, proved to be a poison, from which, inheriting the imperial Eurasian tradition of Russia, cannot be cured until today. So while the abuse of anti-communism is the claim that everything that the russian Union left behind was wrong, it should not be ignored – and the Russians themselves do not! – that what the USSR brought good does not balance in spite of everything political (as well as economic, civilizational, populative, etc. – it is not the subject of this text) the devastation that the communists did in Eurasia.
Tradition-Self-Self-Population
Finally, let us answer the question of alternative. Thomas rightly notes that the Roman dynasty's relationships with the Russian people were rather problematic. The same can be said of the higher Orthodox clergy, at least since the reforms of the patriarch Nikon and later the liquidation of the Moscow Patriarchate. besides problematic is the form of the last Tsar, who undoubtedly pursued a harmful policy, and was highly inept in it. On the another hand, as Thomas no longer writes, the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries is the period of the “Silver Age” of Russian culture, erstwhile the Russian elites yet “find themselves” in their own country and among the Russian people (the precursor and at the same time the literary portraitist of this phenomenon was inactive in “Golden Age” Lew Tolstoy), who only died with the consolidation of Bolshevik power (and the extermination of Russian elites).
An alternate to the deception of the peoples of Eurasian Western Marxism was the conventional triad that gave the essence of the Russian Empire: “Leoslaw-self-government-population”. Russia's problem was not this "Russian idea", but the fact that it was not sufficiently implemented by the ruling dynasty, holding the spiritual leadership of the Church and the ruling elite.
This could be done through the "identification" of the dynasty, the Church and the elite – that was what the "Silver Age" was. It could besides be more extremist – by removing the degenerate elite, the inept ruler or even the full dynasty (in the past of the world, there was frequently besides the replacement of a dying fresh religion). specified changes in the reigning dynasty are something in average past and have even determined the rhythm of Chinese history.
The ruler is right until, as the stories of King Arthur preached, “king and country is unity.” It is legitimate as long as it has a "man" or "mandate of Heaven", so its governments bring to the country and to the subjects of success (remember the "kings of rain"!). On the another hand, it was not justified or legitimate to negate the rule of self-government and authoritarian regulation itself (what the communists did), as it disorganized political, social and civilization Eurasia.
In the 19th century, specified reflections on Russian dirt were conducted by “puppets” and Slavophiles, while eurasians in the 20th century. Today, too, this issue is not meaningless, due to the fact that Russia, after the disaster of Marxist westernization, many would like to westernize this time in a demoliberal formula. The awakening of the imperial consciousness by the Russians to return depends on whether Russia will defy these intentions and keep its subjectivity, on a more simple level – whether it will last historically.
Only empires and authoritarianism or decay are possible for Russia. For Eurasia, this means the dilemma of identity or external colonization. There is so only 1 way for Russia: ‘Tradition-Self-Population’. For us, in Poland, the solla of Russia would be a good point of support and a mention point for our own revolution – folk, Slavic, community; or Eurasian.
Ronald Lasecki
