1. Boris Shragin wrote: “After Stalin's death, there was short-lived hope that the regime would become more humane and liberal. Intellectuals tried reminding new leaders of their promises to observe law and equality. But soon the newcomers fell into the old tyrannical courses, and it became clear that we followed a dead end.” See Shragin, Boris, The Challenge of the Spirit, trans. Falla, P. S. (New York: Knopf, 1978), 56 Google Scholar. The epigraph is on ibid., 36.

2. A considerable literature discusses the loss in appeal of Marxist ideology and development of national and religious movements in the Soviet Union: Liudmila Alekseeva, lstoriia inakomysliia v SSSR (Bensen, Vt.: Khronika, 1984); Allworth, Edward, ed. Ethnic Russia in the USSR: The Dilemma of Dominance (New York: Pergamon, 1980)Google Scholar; Conquest, Robert, ed.. The Last Empire, Nationality and the Soviet Future (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1986)Google Scholar; Dmitrii Pospelovskii, “Etika i istoriia,” Grani, no. 81 (1971): 154-155; Dimitry Pospielovsky, “The Resurgence of Russian Nationalism in Samizdat,“ Survey 19 (Winter 1973):51–74; Dimitry Pospielovsky, “The Neo-Slavophile Trend and Its Relation to the Contemporary Religious Revival in the USSR,” in Religion and Nationalism in Soviet and East European Politics, ed. Pedro Ramet (Durham, N.C: Duke University Press, 1984):41-58; Glazov, Yuri, “Path of the Russian Idea and the Russian Intelligentsia,” Studies in Soviet Thought, no. 17 (1977):279–288 Google Scholar; Yuri Glazov, The Russian Mind since Stalin's Death (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1985); Glazov, Iurii, Tesnye vrata (London: Overseas, 1973):216–245 Google Scholar; K. Volny, “The Intelligentsia and the Democratic Movement,” Survey 17 (Summer 1971), 180-191; Dunlop, John, The New Russian Revolutionaries (Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1976)Google Scholar; Dunlop, John, The Faces of Contemporary Russian Nationalism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Cohen, Stephen F., ed., An End to Silence (New York: Norton, 1982)Google Scholar.

3. Chaadaev, Petr Iakovlevich, Philosophical Letters and Apology of a Madman, trans. Zeldin, Mary-Barbara (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969), 42 Google Scholar.

4. Ibid., 34,38-39,40,39.

5. Ibid., 41.

6. Ibid., 42-43.

7. Ibid., 36,51.

8. Leningrad, Institute of RUssian Literature, Manuscripts Division, Arkhiv Pypina, F. 250, My Translation (Hereafter all quotations in English are my translations unless stated otherwise).

9. See Berdiaev, Nikolai, Smysl istorii (Paris: YMCA, 1969), 5 Google Scholar.

10. See Andrei Amal'rik's statement about the westernizers’ ideology: “Westernism is by itself a purely Russian phenomenon. You won't find any Westernizers in the West.” See Amal'rik, Andrei, “Neskol'ko myslei o Rossii sprovochirovannykh stat'ei Ladova,” Sintaksis, no. 3 (1979): 68 Google Scholar. The best studies on the Slavophiles are Peter Khristoff, The Third Heart (Paris: Mouton, 1970), and Walicki, Andrzej, The Slavophile Controversy (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975)Google Scholar. See Sidney Monas's comment on Chaadaev's idealization of the west in his essay, “Amal'rik's Vision of the End,” in Andrei Amal'rik, Will the Soviet Union Survive until 1984? (New York and Evanston: Harper and Row, 1971), 86-87.

11. Glazov, Tesnye vrata, 7, 48.

12. Terts, Abram [Andrei Siniavskii], Mysli vrasplokh (Munich: Echo, 1986), 42 Google Scholar. Boris Shragin pointed to the Asiatic roots of Russian civilization as an obstacle to westernization. In Challenge of the Spirit (215), he wrote: But the Asiatic social and spiritual structure which we took from the Mongols and which has virtues of its own, differs from the European in being static and incapable of development or progress. Being part-Asian and part-European, Russia had to adopt certain features of Western civilization, but she did so in order to combat that civilization and prevent herself from being Europeanized. Hence political attempts to Europeanize Russia always led to the strengthening of the Asian element.

13. “Ideinyi razbrod, ideinye iskaniia—Pis'mo sovetskogo zhurnalista,” Posev, no. 9 (September 1969): 43.

14. Glazov, Russian Mind, 88, 227-228 (quotation). The Soviet intelligentsia and the Soviet authorities were both highly preoccupied with their image in the west. According to Shragin, “ ‘Soviet man’ as presented to foreigners is supposed to be an image of Western man without the latter's faults” (see Shragin, Challenge of the Spirit, 192).

15. Amal'rik, Will the Soviet Union, 24, 34, 38. In the foreword to his essay Amal'rik wrote “for the Western students of the Soviet Union … this discussion should have the same interest that a fish would have for an ichthyologist if it suddenly began to talk” (see ibid., 6).

16. Shragin, Challenge of the Spirit, 70.

17. In contrast to the highly motivated prerevolutionary Russian intelligentsia, the Soviet intelligentsia described by Amal'rik was “people with a slave psychology, who can lead the rest of the nation to common slavery” (see Amal'rik, Will the Soviet Union, 19). O. Altaev, “The Dual Consciousness of the Intelligentsia and Pseudo-Culture,” The Political, Social and Religious Thought of Russian “Samizdat“—An Anthology, ed. Michael Meerson-Aksenov and Boris Shragin (Belmont, Mass.: Nordland, 1977), 116-147, 131. See also Dmitrii Nelidov, “Ideocratic Consciousness and Personality,” 256-290, of this anthology.

18. See Dmitrii Pospelovskii, “Etika i istoriia,” 157.

19. Grossman, Vasilii, Vse techet (Frankfurt/a.M.: Possev, 1970), 178, 179Google Scholar; Chaadaev, Philosophical Letters, 43. In his unpublished writings, Chaadaev often quoted the unique circumstance of Russian serfdom as an event that determined the nature of Russian history (see Chaadaev, “V proshlom godu,” Arkhiv Pypina, f. 250). The dependence of Russian expansionism on internal enslavement is illustrated in one of Chaadaev's aphorisms: “Russia is a country,” he wrote, “which, in contrast to all other civilized countries, is capable of moving only in one direction: to enslave her own society and all neighboring nations” (see Arkhiv Pypina, f. 250).

20. Grossman, Vse techet, 178-179.

21. See Chaadaev, “Pis'mo ego k T,” Arkhiv Pypina, f. 250.

22. V. Gorskii, “Russkii messianizm i novoe natsional'noe soznanie,” in “Metanoia,” VestnikR. Kh. D., no. 97 (1970);4-96. English trans., V. Gorskii, “Russian Messianism and the New National Consciousness,“ is in Meerson-Aksenov and Shragin, eds., Anthology, 353-393. Citations on 382, 354.

23. See Michael Meerson-Aksenov, “The Influence of the Orthodox Church on Russian Ethnic Identity,“ in Ethnic Russia in the USSR, ed. Edward Allworth.

24. See Barghoorn, Frederick C., Soviet Russian Nationalism (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956), 231–262 Google Scholar.

25. Gorskii, “Russian Messianism,” 386. Hans Kohn defines messianic consciousness as “a belief held with religious fervor by oppressed or unfortunate ethnic, social or religious groups or by men suffering from the consciousness of their own inadequacy” (Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences [1933; rpt. reissued 1938] 9-10:356-363). According to Frederick C. Barghoorn, messianic consciousness could compensate for feelings of inferiority and feelings of guilt (Soviet Russian Nationalism, 231).

26. “Ideinyi razbrod, ideinye iskaniia—Pis'mo sovetskogo zhurnalista,” 43. According to Boris Shragin, “The Bolshevik revolution was not a break with the past, but a reaction of old Russia against the incursion of genuine Europeization,” Challenge of the Spirit. 153.

27. Gorskii, “Russian Messianism,” 386.

28. Similar ideas occur in Chaadaev's thought. In his letter to Adolphe de Circourt, Chaadaev wrote “the epoch of genuine liberation … will come only on the day when we perfectly understand the roads which we traveled over, when the confession of our past errors and faults will escape from our life … when… will be heard the cry of repentance and sorrow” (M. Gershenzon, ed., Sochineniia ipis'maP. la. Chaadaeva. 2 vols. [Moscow: Mamontov, 1913] 1:274).

29. “Metanoia,” 76, 6. In the samizdat manifesto, “Slovo otstupnikov,” I. Denisov expressed similar guilt for Soviet expansionism: “The great sin of the Russian nation in relation to its enslaved nations lies in the imposition of communism by the force of bayonets … and also, without doubt, we are to blame for the fate of occupied nations, for the Soviet system established its colonial empire with our own hands” (Munich, Radio Liberty, Arkhiv Samizdata, no. 1061, 4). Mikhail Agurskii in his chapter, “The Prospect of National Bolshevism,” described the resistance of part of the Russian intelligentsia to the ideology of national bolshevism (see Last Empire, ed. Conquest, 87-108). Another dissident, Vladimir Bukovskii, in his open letter to Aleksei N. Kosygin wrote: “I am Russian, and I grieve for my country, in which public figures openly propagate chauvinism…. I grieve further over the fact that Russia is a prison of nations” (Munich, Radio Liberty, Arkhiv Samizdata, no. 2364, 2). See chapter by Alain Besanon, “Nationalism and Bolshevism in the USSR,” in Last Empire, ed. Conquest, 1-13.

30. John Dunlop has noted the similarity between the effects of Metanoia and the first philosophical letter; see Dunlop, Faces, 44. Dmitrii Pospelovskii also drew on some similarities between the Metanoia authors and Chaadaev: All were religiously oriented and prowestern and saw no future hope outside of a historical Christian context. Like Chaadaev they criticized Russia's imperial expansion and called for repentance for national sins. In contrast to Chaadaev, however, they strongly condemned messianism as a part of imperialistic ideology. See Dimitry Pospielovsky, “The Neo-Slavophile Trend,” in Religion and Nationalism, ed. Ramet, 51. The potential imperialistic implications of messianic consciousness were illustrated by Chaadaev's emotional reaction to the Polish Insurrection of 1831, expressed in his hidden manuscript on Poland, “Un mot sur la question polonaise.” In his memorial on Poland, Chaadaev sided with the tsar's imperialistic policy and condemned the Polish uprising. Chaadaev defensively supported Russian raison d'etat against the hostility of western Europe. The emotion of Chaadaev's writings, and especially his hostility toward Polish independence, revealed Chaadaev's profound concern over Polish charges against Russia. Polish attacks against Russian barbarism unexpectedly obscured Chaadaev's messianic vision of Russia's future world spiritual hegemony. As Gorskii pointed out in his article, the less attractive face of such hegemony was Russian military aggression. Thus Chaadaev's preoccupation with his messianic idea led him to betray his life-long dissent against the official nationality policy of Nicholaev Russia. See Julia Brun-Zejmis, “ ‘A Word on the Polish Question’ by P. Ya. Chaadaev,” California Slavic Studies 11 (1980): 25-32.

31. Vladimir Osipov, “Pis'mo v redaktsiiu zhurnala VestnikRKhD,” Vestnik R.Kh.D., no. 106,295. In “Influence of the Orthodox Church on Russian Ethnic Identity,” Meerson-Aksenov stated that “the psychology of a small, colonized ethnic group is characteristic of Russian ethnocentrist patriotism. It is preservationist patriotism, suffering from an anticolonial complex directed against a certain form of cosmopolitan danger—Marxism” (Ethnic Russia in the USSR, ed. Allworth, 111). Mikhail Agurskii, a Zionist dissident and a contributor to lz-pod glyb, recognized defensive patriotism as a legitimate expression of Russian national protest and general recognition of the suffering of the Russian masses sacrificed for Soviet objectives that they did not understand. See Mikhail Agurskii, “Contemporary Russian Nationalism—History Revisited,“ Research Paper [Jerusalem], no. 45 (January 1982): 2-3.

32. “Mysli—Prozhektory,” Veche, no. 2 (1971), Munich, Radio Liberty, Arkhiv Samizdata, no. 1020, 29, 30. See emotional responses to the Metanoia symposium in the letters of Genadii Shimanov and V Prokhorov. While Shimanov called the symposium “Chaadaevskii soblazn” of Metanoia (see Genadii Shimanov, “Vtoroe otkrytoe pis'mo N. A. Struve, redaktoru zhurnala Vestnik R.Kh.D.,” Vestnik R.Kh.D., no. 104-105, 321), Prokhorov ended his letter with an insulting insinuating remark: “They … They are not Russia Who are they—the future will show.” See V Prokhorov, “Otkrytoe pis'mo v redaktsiiu zhurnala Vestnik R.Kh.D.,” Vestnik R.Kh.D., no. 106, 308.

33. B. Ibragimov, “Po povodu sbornika statei, posviashchennykh sud'bam Rossii, opublikovannovo v no. 97 zhurnala Vestnik Russkogo studencheskogo khristianskogo dvizheniia,” Vestnik R.Kh.D., no. 106,311.

34. See A. S. Pushkin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii. 16 vols. (Moscow: Akademiia nauk, 1947) 16:171.

35. Gershenzon, ed., Sochineniia ipis'ma P. la. Chaadaeva 1:171.

36. Ibid., 181; Chaadaev, Philosophical Letters, 174.

37. Walicki, Andrzej, W kregu konserwatywnej utopii (Warsaw: PWN, 1964), 96 Google Scholar. In 1915 Osip Mandel'shtam saw Chaadaev as exercising the existential freedom of national self-creation in his projection of Russia's “synthetic” nationality of the future (see Osip Mandel'shtam, Proza [Ann Arbor, Mich.: Ardis, 198,3], 31-38). For Chaadaev Russia could synthesize the theoretical heritage of west European historical experience and her own spontaneous national character and, thus, freely project her own future in a purely “scientific” way (see Chaadaev, Philosophical Letters, 175). Like Mandel'shtam, Nikolai Berdiaev valued Chaadaev's idea about the potential character of Russia's identity. In fact, Chaadaev's thesis about Russia's potential future became central to Berdiaev's own philosophical concept of the “Russian idea,” which he interpreted as the gradual actualization of Russia's great historical mission (Nikolai Berdiaev, Russkaia ideia [Paris: YMCA, 1971], 38-39). See also Poltoratskii, Nikolai, Berdiaev i Rossiia (New York: Obshchestvo Druzei Russkoi Kultury, 1967)Google Scholar. Poltoratskii emphasized the deliberate vagueness of Berdiaev's Russian idea (174), which underlined the potential and undefined character of Russia's future exclusive calling. Thus potentiality was the essence of Berdiaev's Russian idea—the idea “in waiting” for its fulfillment in Russia's future historical mission.

38. Berdiaev viewed Chaadaev's philosophical evolution as an integral part of the dialectical development of Russian self-awareness. In Berdiaev's interpretation, Chaadaev's original self-denial became essential for the Russian messianic idea (Berdiaev, Russkaia ideia, 38-39). The influence of Berdiaev's philosophy on the Soviet intelligentsia of the 1960s and 1970s is emphasized in almost all literature describing the development of national and religious thought in the Soviet Union. For example, Glazov emphasized the importance of the Vekhi collection for the revival of the Soviet intelligentsia (see Glazov, Russian Mind, 95-97). Berdiaev's works were among the most important readings required for the members of VSKhSON; see Dunlop, New Russian Revolutionaries, 61-63, and Osipov, V., “Berdiaevskii kruzhok v Leningrade,” Posev, no. 11 (1972), 3 Google Scholar. Meerson-Aksenov also stressed the influence of Berdiaev on Altaev and Gorskii; see Meerson-Aksenov and Shragin, eds., Anthology, 117-118, 353.

39. In his press conference in Zurich (16 November 1974) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn stated that his article, “Raskaianie i samoogranichenie,” Iz-pod glyb, Moscow, 1974 (Paris: YMCA, 1974), 115-150, was directed against the Metanoia authors. See Dve press-konferentsii k sborniku “Iz-pod glyb” (Paris: YMCA, 1974), 50. For Solzhenitsyn's comments on Metanoia see also Vestnik R.Kh.D., no. Ill (1974): 7. While Izpod glyb was stimulated by the Metanoia symposium, other samizdat collections were written in response to Iz-pod glyb by the liberal democratic members of the Soviet intelligentsia: Belotserkovskii, Vadim, ed., Demokraticheskie al'ternativy: Sbornik statei i dokumentov (Achberg, Germ., 1976)Google Scholar; P. Litvinov, M. Meerson- Aksenov, B. Shragin, ed., Samosoznanie, Sbornik statei (New York: Khronika, 1976). In turn, several former contributors to Iz-pod glyb responded with another samizdat collection published in Vestnik R.Kh.D., no. 125 (1978): 108-213.

40. Iz-pod glyb, 157, 169, 196-197, 130, 146. Meerson-Aksenov has shown the influence of the Metanoia articles on Solzhenitsyn's thinking despite his criticism of Metanoia's major idea that communism was a continuation of Russia's historical evolution, a view shared by Berdiaev; see Meerson-Aksenov and Shragin, eds., Anthology, 353. Gorskii's influence can be seen in Solzhenitsyn's passionate denial of communist messianism in his Pis'mo vozhdiam Sovetskogo Soiuza. See Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, Pis'mo vozhdiam Sovetskogo Soiuza (Paris: YMCA, 1974), 47 Google Scholar. According to Meerson-Aksenov, Gorskii's article influenced not only Solzhenitsyn's response but also patriotic tendencies of most 1970s samizdat writings. See Meerson- Aksenov and Shragin, eds., Anthology, 353.

41. In his first philosophical letter Chaadaev wrote: “We belong to that number of nations … which do not seem to make up an integral part of the human race, but which exists only to teach the world some great lesson” (see Chaadaev, Philosophical Letters, 38). Chaadaev's compensating thought about Russia's sacrifice for the education of the west revealed his profound feeling of national inferiority.

42. Similarly, Berdiaev portrayed the experience of Russian communism as an educational lesson for the west. He described communism in Russia as an apocalyptical caricature of the final stage of godless western civilization, not yet experienced by the western world (see Nikolai Berdiaev, “Vostok i zapad,“ Put', no. 23 [August 1930]: 98).

43. Borodin, Leonid, “O russkoi intelligentsia” Grani, no. 96 (1975): 248, 255Google Scholar. I. R. Shafarevich. “Obosoblenie ili sblizhenie,” in Iz-pod glyb, 108.

44. I. R. Shafarevich, “Est'-li u Rossii budushchee?,” in Iz-pod glyb, 257-276. See part 3, “Religion and Ethnic Cohesion,” in Ethnic Russia in the USSR, ed. Allworth, 105-148.

45. Dmitrii Dudko, “V svete preobrazheniia,” Vol'noe Slovo, Posev, no. 33 (1979): 49: Dudko's preaching was based on his apocalyptic vision of the world: “The world is coming apart…. The temple of Satan is being built in the West…. Only in Russian temples do the saintly pray” (ibid.). See Levitin- Krasnov, A., “Otets Dmitrii Dudko,” Posev, no. 1 (January 1975): 26–37 Google Scholar. Dudko, Sviashchennik Dmitrii, O nashem upovanii—besedy, Moscow, 1974 (Paris: YMCA, 1976), 66, 123, 74Google Scholar.

46. Ogorodnikov shared Dudko's apocalyptic vision. In his samizdat journal Obshchina he wrote: “We live in a transitional period, at a time of sharp apocalyptic premonitions.” See “Khristianskii seminar,“ Vol'noe Slovo, Posev, no. 39 (1981): 65, 66. Boris Shragin has criticized the neo-Slavophiles’ national identification with the Russian Orthodox church. According to him, it was

47. About the mutual influence of the national-religious and democratic movements see Dmitrii Pospelovskii, “Etika i istoriia,” 176-177. Meerson-Aksenov pointed to the simultaneous development of Russian religious and human rights movements. He dated the beginning of the human rights movement to 5 December 1965, the first demonstration on Pushkin Square in Moscow in defense of Andrei Siniavskii and Iulii Danel'. The religious movement originated on 15 December 1965, when Nikolai Eshliman and Gleb Iakunin (two Russian priests) sent a letter to Patriarch Aleksei and Nikolai Podgornyi, protesting against religious persecution. According to Meerson-Aksenov, “this constituted the earliest awakening of the church's movement for human rights” (in Ethnic Russia in the USSR, ed. Allworth, 113). Glazov, Russian Mind, 96. Glazov analyzed the ideological evolution of the Soviet intelligentsia from moral dissent to religious opposition on 115-131.

48. Sergei Soldatov, “Shest’ tezisov za svobodno-natsional'nuiu Rossiiu,” Russkaia Mysl, 27 September 1979, 4.

49. K. Volny, “The Intelligentsia and the Democratic Movement,” Survey 17 (Summer 1971): 186, 190, 191.

50. Glazov, Tesnye vrata, 12; idem, Russian Mind, 234 (quotation).

51. The messianic ideology of an extreme rightist dissident political thinker, Genadii Shimanov, seemed to be an exception. Shimanov described Russia's future as a peculiar synthesis of strong communist rule with Russian Orthodoxy. See Genadii Shimanov, “Kak ponimat’ nashu istoriiu i k chemu v nei stremit'- sia,” London, Keston College, Arkhiv Samizdata, no. 2086, 10. Shimanov pursued the idea of Russian dominance and forced Russification of the rest of the world (ibid., 14). See also Genadii Shimanov, “Moskva—tretii Rim,” and “Ideal'noe gosudarstvo,” London, Keston College, Arkhiv Samizdata, no. 2218, 14. On Shimanov, see Aleksandr Ianov, “Ideal'noe gosudarstvo Genadiia Shimanova,” Sintaksis, no. 1 (1978):31-56. In Challenge of the Spirit, Shragin eloquently summarized the prevailing helplessness of the Soviet intelligentsia: “It is as though history had decided to perform an experiment on the Russian people by putting into effect the most extreme conclusions of philosophy and confronting us in our daily lives with situations in which there is no hope, no outlook for the future, and no remedy” (10). According to Barghoorn, low self-esteem resulted from “the moral compromise and humiliation caused by guilt between obligatory official values and actual behavior.” See Frederick Barghoorn, “Russian Nationalism and Soviet Politics: Official and Unofficial Perspectives,” in Last Empire, ed. Conquest, 65.

52. Chaadaev, Philosophical Letters, 169.

53. McNally, Raymond T., The Major Works of Peter Chaadaev (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1969), 14 Google Scholar. McNally considers Chaadaev a religious, social, and cultural Utopian thinker.

54. Chaadaev, Philosophical Letters, 174-175.