Igor Shafarevich’s ‘Russophobia’: An Analysis

To expand my recent articles on the prominent Soviet dissident mathematician Igor Shafarevich; I thought it’d be interesting to analyse his famous work ‘Russophobia’. In spite of often being seen as a separate work to his wildly popular ‘The Socialist Phenomenon’; (1) ‘Russophobia’ actually forms an extension of the thesis.

In both ‘Russophobia’ and ‘The Socialist Phenomenon’; Shafarevich argues that the nation and its proxy the nation state (i.e. defining nationhood biologically not as merely a territorial unit) is an entity which supersedes and manipulates the ostensible ideology that it adheres to.

Hence in ‘The Socialist Phenomenon’ he argues a-la Karl Wittfogel that all socialist intellectual systems have a basis that is inherently opposed to the natural order and as such the ‘ruthless materialism’ or ‘utopian socialism’ of left wing political theorists inherently conflicts with the reality that they claim to be analysing.

A good example of this is when he cites the theory of French socialist Charles Fourier that the jewish people could be – by removing the opportunity for capitalist style incentives to exploit the non-jewish masses – be reformed from their habitual usurious practices. (2)

Therefore, to Shafarevich the jews cannot be reformed by taking away the opportunity to engage in usury, because it is a national (= racial) characteristic that is as natural to them as breathing.

Thus ‘ruthless materialist’ and ‘utopian socialist’ schemes inevitably fail, because they do not take into account the fact that in trying to attain their object the actors in them are biological organisms with different group characteristics and thus do not conform to the assumed basis of egalitarianism that is the perquisite of the Socialist ‘new man’.

Shafarevich refines this critique in ‘Russophobia’ by bringing in the concept of inter-ethnic group competition. He points out that the critics of Russia – who are quick to suggest  that Russians as a nation are afflicted with ‘a servile mentality, a lack of self-worth, rampant xenophobia and a mixture of malice, envy and admiration of foreign powers’ as well as a sense of Russian messianism (or ‘universal Russian arrogance’) about Moscow being the Third Rome. (3)

They also have an almost universal habit of being ardent jewish nationalists. (4) The author who Shafarevich singles out is Richard Pipes – especially his much lauded but factually dubious book ‘Russia Under the Old Regime’ – who is the father of well-known modern ultra-Zionist and neo-conservative warmonger Daniel Pipes. (5)

Shafarevich notes that Pipes among others argues that Russians always blame jews, Tartars, Greeks and Germans for their problems as long as it is not themselves. Therefore, the aftermath of the 1917 revolutions flowed naturally from the alleged despotic tradition in Russian history. It thus follows that Russia is perceived to have the unique problem of simultaneously promoting Russian nationalism, anti-Semitism and a revival of Stalinism. Thus in order to improve Russia these traits need to be extirpated and unless these traits are checked then Russia is doomed to collapse. (6)

This is a fair and accurate representation of Pipes’ central thesis in his various works on the history of Russia. (7) The parallels with the common claims of the huge literature on the subject of anti-Semitism and especially its Germanophobic sub-section – as represented by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s infamous work ‘Hitler’s Willing Executioners’ which is simply a repeat of Pipes’ thesis about Russians but applied to the Germans instead - are obvious with the same themes, arguments and even evidence being used.

To wit: the jews are not to blame, the non-jews projected their problems and own behaviours onto the jews and that there is a unique strain of despotism in non-jewish history, which must be eradicated since otherwise Western civilization – which is conceived of as a primarily jewish creation – (8) is doomed to collapse.

Sound familiar?

It should because it the leitmotiv of just about every academic and popular article, pamphlet, monograph and book on anti-Semitism and jewish history that has been published in the last fifty to sixty years. There is little intellectual diversity and a rigid conformity on this issue among Western academics and Shafarevich’s point – which is as valid now as it was in the 1980s – is that the historical assumptions behind these beliefs are utterly bogus. (9)

In ‘Russophobia’ Shafarevich details why this so, but without repeating and examining the specific arguments as well as the historical literature; it is difficult to do likewise.

However, to point out the absurdity of the arguments of the Pipes and Goldhagen school of thought; we need but adduce the fact – as Shafarevich correctly does – (10) that Pipes claimed that the Third Reich’s Nuremberg Laws were based on Tsar Nicholas I’s anti-jewish legislation, which is utter nonsense.

Alternatively we could point to Pipes’ assertion – which is still commonly heard today – that Russia sees itself as the messianic ‘Third Rome’, which is based on the writing of an obscure medieval Russian monk. More pointedly however the jews have long prayed for ‘Next Year in Jerusalem’ at the end of the annual Yom Kippur service, which indicates both their messianism and vision of themselves as a world power and the Italian revolutionary Giuseppe Mazzini advocated for a Roma Terzio (= ‘Third Rome’) in a similar way as the medieval Russian monk.

Further still we could point out that in places Pipes makes sweeping assertions about the alleged ‘cynicism’ and ‘selfishness’ of the Russian people based upon… well… a proverb. (11)

With the arguments of the school of Pipes and Goldhagen thus exposed as being the intricate illusions derived from something else other than facts and evidence. It is therefore easy to see that Shafarevich’s point about the partisans of such theses being ideologically motivated in a hatred of all things Russian and also German is valid.

Shafarevich however takes things to the next level: he identifies this isn’t just some hatred that came out of no-where like some will-o’-the-wisp, but rather has a basis in ethnic identity and competition.

Thus, when he fingers the jews - and I am sure many of his original readers cried out in absolute horror – he places this Russophobia and Germanophobia in the specific frame of jewish malevolence towards non-jewish peoples. Who they judge to be lower beings than themselves (a-la the biologically-based view of jewish superiority exhibited by Judaism) and to have persecuted them unjustly, while they – the jews – have disproportionately contributed to the betterment of the world (a-la Tikkun Olam).

This view is justified by recent critical academic works which have touched on the jewish tendency to self-diagnose anti-Semitism as being nothing whatsoever to do with them and consequently writing jewish history as one series of events caused by a totally irrational hatred of them by the amorphous ‘Other’ (the non-jew). (12) Thus reinforcing both a sense of superiority, but also the status of the non-jew as an intrinsically evil being.

This kind of uncritical autobiographical writing feeds in to Shafarevich’s thesis – built upon Augustin Cochin’s famous analysis of the French Revolution – that the jews from 1917 formed an despotic adversarial elite in the Soviet Union, which saw itself as being cosmopolitan and infinitely superior to those it ruled. (13)

That this is certainly true cannot be reasonably disputed since jews absolutely dominated Soviet institutions during the most repressive years of the Soviet Union under both Lenin and Stalin. (14)

This same repression was enacted by Marxist ideologues but carried out by an adversarial jewish elite who – as we have seen – had an ideological hatred of everything Russian as well as everything German, because of the intrinsic evil and persecution of them that they believed it represented. (15)

The savage repressive actions of the jewish elite - which as always jewish historians have long tried to downplay and/or dispute – naturally fed resentment among the Russian people, which in turn lead to the anti-jewish pogroms in the Baltic states, Ukraine, Belarus and Russia proper during the German campaign in Russia from 1941-1944.

Similarly this schema of viewing the jews as an adversarial elite fits nicely with Ginsberg’s thesis that jews have historically played the role of an adversarial middle class officialdom for the non-jewish aristocratic elite in both Christian and Islamic civilisations, which in turn also led to savage local rebellions that singled out the jews as well as more serious affairs when the elite also turned on them. (16)

Thus when they topple and replace the same aristocratic elite they serve. Then the jews continue to behave in the same adversarial way that they did as the middle class officials of their former masters, but without the check on their behaviour that the aristocracy provided. Instead, the jews – as Vadim Birstein argued concerning the jewish-dominated Soviet leadership – (17) behaved like gangsters not governors.

In essence: jewish behaviour based on a fantasy of what anti-Semitism was, as Shafarevich argued in ‘Russophobia’, drove the creation of an anti-Semitism that was exactly what they feared and wanted to extirpate.

References

(1) Mikhail Epstein, 1994, ‘From Anti-Socialism to Anti-Semitism: Igor Shafarevich’, 1st Edition, The National Council for Soviet and East European Research: Washington D.C., p. 1

(2) Igor Shafarevich, 1980, ‘The Socialist Phenomenon’, 1st Edition, Harper & Row: New York, p. 206

(3) Anon., ‘Shafarevich Decries 'Russophobia,' Jewish Nationalism’, Soviet Union: Political Affairs, 22nd March 1990,p. 3

(4) Ibid., p. 2

(5) Ibid., pp. 2-3

(6) Ibid., p. 3

(7) Cf. Israel Getzler, 1992, ‘Richard Pipes's 'Revisionist' History of the Russian Revolution’, The Slavonic and East European Review, Vol. 70, No. 1, pp. 111-126

(8) Cf. Thomas Cahill, 1999, ‘The Gifts of the Jews: How a Tribe of Desert Nomads Changed the Way Everyone Thinks and Feels’, 1^st Edition, Anchor: London ; Max Isaac Dimont, 2007, ‘Jews, God and History’, 2^nd Edition, Random House: New York

(9) Anon., Op. Cit., p. 4

(10) Ibid., p. 5

(11) Ibid., p.6

(12) Cf. Elliot Horowitz, 2007, ‘Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy of Jewish Violence’, 1^st Edition, Princeton University Press: Princeton; Albert Lindemann, 1997, ‘Esau’s Tears: Anti-Semitism and the Rise of the Jews’, 2^nd Edition, Cambridge University Press: New York

(13) Anon., Op. Cit., p. 14

(14) The population statistics and demographics make this a simple fact: Bernard Wasserstein, 2012, ‘On the Eve: The Jews of Europe before the Second World War’, 1^st Edition, Profile: London, pp. 19-20

(15) Krista Berglund, 2012, ‘The Vexing Case of Igor Shafarevich, a Russian Political Thinker’, 1st Edition, Birkhauser: Switzerland, p. 248

(16) Cf. Benjamin Ginsberg, 1993, ‘The Fatal Embrace: Jews and the State’, 1^st Edition, University of Chicago Press: Chicago

(17) Cf. Vadim Birstein, 2011, ‘SMERSH: Stalin's Secret Weapon: Soviet Military Counterintelligence in WWII’, 1^st Edition, Biteback: London