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1994-05-02
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<text>
<title>
Russia's Reactionaries
</title>
<article>
<hdr>
World Press Review, May 1992
Europe: Russia's Reactionaries
</hdr>
<body>
<p>By Vladimir Ilyushenko, "Literaturnaya Gazeta" (writer's
weekly), Moscow.
</p>
<p> When an empire collapses, the imperial mentality searches
for a cause, and enemy. It finds democrats and reformers. The
idea of revenge obsesses hundreds of thousands. This has led to
a rapid increase in the fascist threat in Russia.
</p>
<p> An avalanche of hatred, malice, and slander is sweeping over
the public. Foolish and crazy fabrications, quasi-scientific
ideas, are circulated incessantly by pogrom-minded
publications. Rightist manifestations are becoming both numerous
and diverse--from pickets and rallies to the ritual burning
of effigies and the setting on fire of apartments. A united
front of rightist forces is taking shape.
</p>
<p> Alongside such wild and odious personalities as right-wing
leaders Vladimir Zhirinovsky and Aleksandr Nevzorov, lawyer
Sergei Baburin, who heads the Russian People's Alliance, looks
almost liberal and moderate--at any rate, respectable. Yet
Baburin, honored by the rightist newspaper Den (The Day), has
consistently fought against democratic policies. And although he
has declared that "we are creating a public movement that is
founded on state-patriotism principles," in reality it all
boils down to totalitarian ideology: the re-creation of a
"unified and invisible" country ("Russia is the former Soviet
Union") and the updating of old myths (the Russian community,
a powerful state, collective ownership).
</p>
<p> The demands of Baburin and his comrades in arms for the
union to be restored to its former boundaries--and the
ultimatums to Ukraine and other former Soviet republics--carry
the risk, if not of war, of serious and bloody excesses. On the
whole, the talk is of a new reactionary utopia.
</p>
<p> Baburin has acted as a link between the communists and the
classic fascists, the national "patriots." Their alliance began
to take shape a long time ago, but now they have received a
powerful impulse to organize. We are facing a neo-fascist
threat.
</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>