Dugin, Solzenitsyn and Putin vs. the Soviet Union

[Nox Vox]

A lot is made of the nostalgia for Stalin in the Russian Federation right now. Most commentators can't talk about Russia without mentioning how distaste for the liberal decadence of the nineties and strong man politics reminds them of the Soviet Era. Putin is usually spoken of as being philo-Soviet.

Strangely, many figures on the right embrace the new Russia, which seems to the author like the old Russia. It's nationalistic (of course, according to a leftist, the nationalism of the Eastern Bloc was in reality the make-up of an international revolution), partisan, illiberal, corrupt, expansionist, and, while slightly more liberal regarding artists and homosexuals, closer to the old old Russia than the old Russia.

I read an article a while ago that used the unprecedentedly stupid pun "Market-Leninism" to describe the economy under Putin. But in reality, the right in the east is still anti-bourgeoisie, unlike the "free market" right in the west.

So then my question would be, why is the current Russia, supported by the late Solzenitsyn and the former-Communist Party drone Dugin, both far-right wing figures, considered to be on the right? Is the sole difference between the USSR and the Russian Federation an emphasis on the proletariat vs. the nation, or is it greater than that?

Considering Dugin, Putin's right-wing intellectual supporter, is a leftover from the Communist Party, and Solzenitsyn, Putin's dead right-wing supporter, a Soviet dissident, what has led us to brand Putinism a right-wing ideology?

[Stirnerian]

This is the point I made less eloquently in my own thread. It doesn't matter, strictly speaking, if Eurasianism is 'right-wing' in an objective sense; it's probably closer to something approximating the Western notion of the 'radical Center', a socially conservative, fiscally clientelist strain of bourgeoisie politics like a far more virulent incarnation of Nixon's Silent Majority.

The West's own Rightists have tentatively embraced it, and their enemies should treat them as guilty by association, just as their ideological forebears treated Western liberals during the Cold War.


This means appealing to some unsavory instincts. We're going to have to acclimate to that. And it ought to be done in a rational way. Whenever Putin makes an aggressive move against a neighboring State, rather than wrap ourselves once again into contortions over American imperialism versus Russian imperialism, we ought to try to turn the focus to the domestic Rightists who idolize Putin. We'd be a Hell of a lot closer to the truth than those ancap dipshits who seriously try to argue that Nazism was a socialist ideology.

Today it could be homosexuals in Crimea. Tomorrow - it could be you.

[Nox Vox]

But the same words about homosexuals could be said about virtually any East Bloc country before the nineties.

So the friend of our enemy is our enemy? The right isn't in solidarity on this. The Buchanans are pro-Putin, and the Hitchens, Pauls, Le Pens and Farages are all warm towards him, but the neocons see Russia as a substantial threat to liberal economics and the interventionist mindset. The McCains, the Camerons, the Bushes; the breed that are going to get elected in this country are all anti-Putin. Only the right in Europe, the anti-UN, anti-EU anti-Israel, anti-interventionist right, like UKIP and the National Front, has any popular support.

And what about Svoboda? The individual nationalist groups of the world, however passive they are about international capitalism, are opposed to it in their own countries, and opposed to each other. The Russian nationalists hate the Ukrainian nationalists and vice versa. And why shouldn't they?

RT often tries to slander Ukraine's pro-government forces by stressing the fascist element. Ukrainians often try to slander Russia by stressing the Duginist fascist elements. Who wins in this game?

It's easy to imagine that, say, oh, we don't like Republicans here, some Republicans like Putin, so let's take a stance against him, and everything will be fine. But in the world of the socially conservative, anti-capitalist, anti-Nato, anti-EU, anti-American right, the Putin right, and the pro-EU, pro-Nato, pro-UN, socially conservative Ukrainian right, which is right?

[Stirnerian]

It's easy to imagine that, say, oh, we don't like Republicans here, some Republicans like Putin, so let's take a stance against him, and everything will be fine. But in the world of the socially conservative, anti-capitalist, anti-Nato, anti-EU, anti-American right, the Putin right, and the pro-EU, pro-Nato, pro-UN, socially conservative Ukrainian right, which is right?

None of them, of course. And the proper attitude towards them is an opportunistic one: whichever happens to be in the ascendant at any given moment will inevitably look bad, because they're all bad. And each of them should be given their due turn as the mallet we use to whack our enemies that support them.

[Rafiq]

So the friend of our enemy is our enemy? The right isn't in solidarity on this. The Buchanans are pro-Putin, and the Hitchens, Pauls, Le Pens and Farages are all warm towards him, but the neocons see Russia as a substantial threat to liberal economics and the interventionist mindset. The McCains, the Camerons, the Bushes; the breed that are going to get elected in this country are all anti-Putin. Only the right in Europe, the anti-UN, anti-EU anti-Israel, anti-interventionist right, like UKIP and the National Front, has any popular support.


You are smart to make note upon this observation - it is not a marginal phenomenon that the Russian state has fostered a political current within Europe in such a form - it is if anything representative of the declining nature of American hegemony and global liberalism as the de-facto ideological superstructure of global capitalism. The Russian state and its pawns are without further condition enemies in themselves, the political enemy of European Communism (or its possible emergence). The point is simple: The liberal apparatus is too weak to defend the civic bourgeois values of the enlightenment, the achievements of capitalism, by being unable to provide a viable reason, a viable argument against the rise of new contenders to state power. To add, they themselves actively take part in the dismantlement of what remains of our enlightenment values, replacing them with a new technocratic caste. Thus UKIP, and Front National can only ever appear - reasonable as the rational heirs to European capitalism at the current pace of things. One thing is clear in at the very least Europe: Neoliberalism is in retreat - but the new contenders to power are even worse just as ISIS was infinitely worse than the corrupt, depraved, and despotic Iraqi and Syrian states respectively. In that, with the dissolution of neoliberalism comes the annihilation of the achievments of the enlightenment, even of the past decades with a return to national chauvinism. Leftists ought to mercilessly oppose them - and this does not mean siding with the liberal establishment. It means setting one's priorities and point of reference straight - the liberal establishment is dying away, the question will soon become not whether we ought to align ourselves with them, but whether they are worth aligning themselves with what could be a strong and re-vitalized Left. We oppose the existing order, but seek to supersede its achievements. The reaction opposes the existing order, while opposing these very achievements. We oppose Liberalism, but it is "multi-culturalism", integral to this Liberalism, that we oppose? No! Is it the subservience of "national sovereignty" to the authority of trans-national power? No!

But alas, what is at stake here is not simply European civilization in the face of "asiatic" Russia, or some kind of ancient Eastern threat. The geist of the Russian nation had long been superseded with the October revolution... it remains today confused, corrupt, and entangled as the regression of the spirit, as it was in France following the defeat at waterloo, can only ever be temporal unless culminating into an even worse barbarism. What is at stake here in Russia is not simply the history of Russia and its legacy, but the legacy of the world. Only a re-vitalized Left can defend our heroes from being absorbed and subsumed into the logic of national identity and chauvinism. We cannot stand for Lenin, in all his self-sufficiency, to serve as a pawn of Russian national interests. The mere reduction of the legacy of the Soviet Union to the logic of Russian national sentiments is in itself barbarism. Russian nationalism might very well be the worst sham of all, for it was the October revolution and the very negation of the "Russian nation" into a force of universal struggle which had brought the "Russia", the Soviet Union, to the heights of glory so unignorable even by the most reactionary of Russian intellectuals like Dugin. The Russian "Communists", nationalists and reactionaries attempt so desperately to re-emulate this glory, but it can only present itself as a twisted, degenerate and confused gargoyle next to the titan that was the Soviet Union, even under Stalin, even during its worst stages of degeneracy. Soviet power was irrevocably owed to the power of the October revolution and the violent social changes that only Communists could have facilitated, otherwise it couldn't have existed. Russia's honor, if any, was precisely that it refused to be Russia, it vested itself the spirit of the world, in this very fabric was the emancipation of working people universally, of all nations. As any idiot can know, there is nothing inherent to the characteristics of any nation which make it particular - only through the violent struggle wrought out by class struggle and history, in all nations, can such "glory" be conceived in retrospect to be the glory of the nation. But alas, it is a lie.

[JayBro47]

UKIP and National Front "Anti-Israel?" Maybe anti-interventionist.

[Tim Cornelis]

The form of fascism is palingenetic ultranationalism; its content is drawn from declasses, socially uprooted elements, historically disproportionally represented by the petty bourgeois. Its opposition to oligarchy is rooted in petty bourgeois reaction.

Palingenetic ultranationalism means that fascism seeks to stage a national rebirth inspired by some Golden Age from the national history, which it seems is always some sort of Empire. Mussolini was inspired by the Roman Empire and of course the Hitler salute was the conventional Roman salute toward magistrates or superiors; Hitler was inspired by the German Reichs therefore styling Nazi-Germany the Third Reich. Turkish fascists are inspired by the Ottoman Empire; Dutch fascists by the Dutch Empire and borrow its symbolism. Scandinavian fascists use Viking symbolism and Mongolian fascists adore Gengish Khan. Russian fascists are inspired by the Russian Empire and so have adopted the Romanov Flag, but, curiously, the Soviet Empire was a Golden Age as well. Under Stalin's leadership Russia was transformed from a relatively backward peasant country to an industrial super power competing for world hegemon. Fascists have for this reason also adopted Soviet symbolism and even a Stalinist form (e.g. National-Bolshevism). Its content, however, is distinctly fascist. Soviet symbolism and Imperial symbolism are used side by side in Novorossiya, whose leadership is dominated by ultra-nationalists and fascists. Don't be duped by this like so many Stalinists and Tankies. Soviet symbolism in this context does not mean sympathies for communism, but a vile reactionary petty bourgeois socialism akin to Strasserism at best, and generic fascism at its worst.


"In different ways, both Hamerquist and Sakai argue that fascism’s radical approach shapes its relationship with capitalism. Of the two writers, Sakai’s position is closer to a Bonapartist model. He describes fascism as “anti-bourgeois but not anti-capitalist.” Under fascist regimes, “capitalism is restabilized but the bourgeoisie pays the price of temporarily no longer ruling the capitalist State.” But for Sakai this conflict is much starker than it is for Bonapartism theorists. Today’s fascism “is opposed to the big imperialist bourgeoisie… to the transnational corporations and banks, and their world-spanning ‘multicultural’ bourgeois culture. Fascism really wants to bring down the World Bank, WTO and NATO, and even America the Superpower. As in destroy.”26"

http://sdonline.org/47/two-ways-of-looking-at-fascism/

[JayBro47]

"But alas, what is at stake here is not simply European civilization in the face of "asiatic" Russia, or some kind of ancient Eastern threat. The geist of the Russian nation had long been superseded with the October revolution... it remains today confused, corrupt, and entangled as the regression of the spirit, as it was in France following the defeat at waterloo, can only ever be temporal unless culminating into an even worse barbarism. What is at stake here in Russia is not simply the history of Russia and its legacy, but the legacy of the world. Only a re-vitalized Left can defend our heroes from being absorbed and subsumed into the logic of national identity and chauvinism. We cannot stand for Lenin, in all his self-sufficiency, to serve as a pawn of Russian national interests. The mere reduction of the legacy of the Soviet Union to the logic of Russian national sentiments is in itself barbarism. Russian nationalism might very well be the worst sham of all, for it was the October revolution and the very negation of the "Russian nation" into a force of universal struggle which had brought the "Russia", the Soviet Union, to the heights of glory so unignorable even by the most reactionary of Russian intellectuals like Dugin. The Russian "Communists", nationalists and reactionaries attempt so desperately to re-emulate this glory, but it can only present itself as a twisted, degenerate and confused gargoyle next to the titan that was the Soviet Union, even under Stalin, even during its worst stages of degeneracy. Soviet power was irrevocably owed to the power of the October revolution and the violent social changes that only Communists could have facilitated, otherwise it couldn't have existed. Russia's honor, if any, was precisely that it refused to be Russia, it vested itself the spirit of the world, in this very fabric was the emancipation of working people universally, of all nations. As any idiot can know, there is nothing inherent to the characteristics of any nation which make it particular - only through the violent struggle wrought out by class struggle and history, in all nations, can such "glory" be conceived in retrospect to be the glory of the nation. But alas, it is a lie."

Rafiq you might find this quote from the Third Positionist, Antisemitic Fascist Yockey from 1948 absolutely fascinating. I like the part about "refused to be Russia, vested itself the spirit of the world."

"Thus, there are two Russias: the Bolshevik regime, and the true Russia underneath. Bolshevism, with its worship of Western technology, and of a silly foreign theory of class-war, does not express the soul of the true Russia. . . . This spirit is still there, since it is organic, and cannot be killed, but must express itself. This is the spirit of Asiatic Bolshevism, which is at present harnessed to the Bolshevism of the Moscow regime, with its economic-technical obsession.[30]"

So basically he agrees with you, but from the opposite perspective. I believe the other soul, that of the Chauvinist-Rus overtook the other elements since 1968 in Social-Imperialism, including when it began using antisemitism, etc. This can be seen by the referral to the Brezhnev-Clique as "New Tsars" by other Communists.