Amerika

Original title: Evrazitsii i Gosudarstvo. (~ 1929)

Trans. from the russian original by M.Conserva

The live and deeply vivid character of the Eurasist doctrine is shown first of all in that gradual process of self-clarification, which spontaneously attracts us to the knowledge of our own essence, as some special ideological group. In the first phases of this process a set of problems was pointed out, but there was no system yet; in the subsequent phases problems began to emerge in some regular order. So, spontaneously and at the same time regularly, political, social and economic problems are now being elaborated by us. It is possible to say that in this area we have already established a lot, however not everything. From the set of yet not quite solved questions it is necessary first of all to recall the question about our own essence, as an organized group, and about our place in the state. General ideas about this issue have already been expressed, however they have no definitive character or established formula. Do we represent ourselves as a party or not? Should we aim at forming a united party? And if not, who are we? And what is our place in the state? And do we consider the normal eurasist state to be the same as the modern state, in the present political conditions?

In the following pages, a solution to the mentioned questions will be found, an experience which could have the sense of a “debate”, and also could and serve as material for the final decision. It is a multi-layer theme – the separate layers ought to be distinguished, and depending on the different planes to be differently formulated. Then, maybe, both those who affirm that we are party and those who deny to us this party character will appear to be equally right

1.

A political party in the modern sense of this word is defined as a freely arisen (instead of resulting from the statal entity) group of persons, which is united by general purposes and community in understanding the means leading to the accomplishment of the defined purposes (unity of means). Most significant to a party may be the unity of purposes, but sometimes also the unity of means. All the difference between bolsheviks and mensheviks, for instance, is reduced to the dissent concerning tactics, instead of final purposes; but the difference of purposes distinguishes socialist from bourgeois parties. An immediate task of any political party is the occupation of the apparatus of state power, so that it shall put into practice the basic purposes (we shall call it “political action”). However many modern political parties do not aspire at all to the immediate accomplishment of this last purpose. Tactical reasons often induce a party in every possible way to abstain not only from seizing power, but also from direct involvement in the government. Modern European political regimes especially favour similar tactics of abstention, by virtue of which one very powerful modern political party, for example, the socialists, performs in the parliament an eternal opposition to all other political parties and to any government. Such a condition is very convenient, since “outsiders” eternally criticize and do not take any responsibility, creating the belief that any government is bad, except for the socialists, for which the opportunity has not come yet.

Since modern European political parties are essentially free to unite, the party regime to some extent reputes the multiparty spirit as an expression of the individual right of involvement in politics, as the result of freedom of political opinion. These different opinions can stand in a competition and struggle process, since the relations between parties are also built during the struggle. The normal way of party struggle aims at acquiring the majority, which would ensure party domination. Acquiring the majority means that all the other parties should subordinate to the winner and refuse to prevail, pending the change of political regime. A different, not considered as normal path, is dictatorship, through which one of the parties, not possessing the majority, seizes power and pursues its program by force, contrary to the will of the majority. Dictatorship can be either “soft”, when the party who seizes the power does not suppress the others, allowing within given limits their activity; or “rigid”, when the party who seizes the power simply suppresses the remaining ones and becomes the only dominant group in the state (for instance, fascism in its first and last phases of development).

The historically democratic regime of the western states has worked out two kinds of party formations, whose borders sometimes overlap, though in their ideal forms can be quite definitely expressed. The first of them is characterized by the fact that at the basis of party integration does not stand any social or political doctrine (“ideology”), nor dogma, nor sum of tenets, but some practical issue of current politics or a sum of such questions (for example, issues of customs politics, the question of the elective franchises, the agrarian question in its present pattern etc.). These are “platform” league parties. A huge role they have played in the life of the anglo-american states. In effect, basic political parties in England are essentially similar to platform “parties”, instead of being ideological unions based on a “program “. The other kind of modern party formations are the purely ideological unions, whose brightest modern example are the socialists. The basis of modern socialist parties is a known public doctrine, a known concept of social and political life, even some philosophy – for instance, such is Marxism. If for platform parties politics is like a purpose in itself, for program parties it is only one of the means for achieving their basic ideological purposes. There was a time when the socialists did not admit political struggle and did not participate in it (especially in parliamentary struggle), but Lassalle and Marx set them on the path of politics. As a feature of this sort of “program parties” it is necessary to consider that, though their basic tasks are not reduced to “politics”, nevertheless the modern party is always a product of a given social and political ideology. The modern parties in the end aim at the transformation of social life, have some social doctrine as their basis and, if they are linked to a general world-view, this is some social philosophy. These parties are a product of that “religion of a society”, according to which many contemporary people in the western civilization live – believing that transforming the society is the basic problem of life, and that together with this trasformation the supreme vital task facing man will be fulfilled.

The modern political party only partially coincide with the historically arisen social groups and public social strata. So, for example, the working party of english type generally coincides with that social stratum of Great Britain bearing the name of working class. Many national parties in the various states lay on historical-anthropological and racial foundations. But the majority of modern parties not only does not coincide with real social groups, but even more – normally to each definite social group there correspond some different political parties. So the various socialist parties consider themselves as the representatives of “proletariat”. The well-known Russian socialist party, whose base is composed from declassed urban intelligentsia, considered itself for some reason the elected representative of the peasantry, whereas the peasants in it were less than 10 %. However, the diffusion of its slogans managed him to attract a significant amount of peasant votes during the revolution. Thus, the political party in modern sense is a union which does not serve to the mere representation of real interests of social strata and groups, but aims to use some given real interests to given political ends This feature distinguishes the political party from real unions as labor unions, syndicates, trade-unions etc.

From the political parties in the described sense it is necessary to distinguish those modern, also ideological unions, which, though aiming at achieving some known political ends, however do not consider this at all as their last problem, and sometimes simply do not expose it openly as their purpose. It is impossible to undervalue the roles of such unions in the life of the modern western states. To them, for example, roman catholic orders belong; in particular, here we must recall the Jesuits, whose political role was huge, though they never were political party like the socialists or communists. If the Jesuits also set before themselves, and sometimes and directly put into practice purposes similar to those of the modern communists (entity of the communist state in Southern America), nevertheless those for them were not the ultimate and highest task, but only a series of means for the accomplishment of highest, religious plans. Similarly, roman catholics and their orders participated and participate to modern political life, but on this subject they organized everywhere a special political party, as it is, for instance, the centre party in Germany. To the same sort of ideological union belongs the masonry, which is not a political party, but whose ideas, organization and activities ara capable of achieving of some political ends. The primary goals of masonry are not at all addressed to the solution of social problems. The masons have both religious and moral tasks inherited from their rather old historical traditions, and politics is only one of the particular plans of their general activity.

Let’s now put the question – to which of the stated kinds of unions are closer the eurasiststs? It is self evident that eurasists are not a platform or league party. We are an ideological union and we shall always identify ourselves as such union. We have not only a program, we are consolidated by a doctrine, an aggregate of dogmas, a whole vision of the world, a whole philosophy. In this sense we formally stand closer to the socialists and communists, especially to marxists. But from socialism we are resolutely separated by all our comprehension of the world. Besides we plan an absolutely different social system than socialism, and we uphold absolutely different moral, social, philosophical and religious doctrines. We do not profess western social religion, we do not consider that the solution of the social question is the ultimate human problem, we deny the theory of an earthly paradise. Political action for us, as well as for the socialists, is not an end in itself: we too aim to political action for special, supreme purposes, but these purposes are not for us the achievement of definitive social welfare on this planet. Because our problems do not consist of politics or plans for a new social formations, as it is for the socialists. In this sense our union – from the point of view of its goal – is closer to the union of a religious order. We must with special emphasis acknowledge that from the formal (not essential) point of view we stand closer not to political parties, but to such associations like the roman catholic orders or the masons. But both the former and the latter are essentially products of the western civilization, western christianity, while we are eastern and, obviously, we cannnot inspire ourselves neither to the ideals of the Jesuits, nor to the ideals of their western antipodes – “free thinkers “, reformers and protesters, disciples of Jacob Boehme, Weigel and the Kabbalah, united by the antidogmatical opposition against orthodox catholicism and orthodox judaism. On spirit, we are perhaps, the first kind of Russian order. Whether we had forerunners or not – this question is not yet clear. I personally think that the oldest tradition is looking at us. Among prototypes it is especially important to indicate that “party” – I put this word into quotation marks, – which acted in ancient Moscow under the name of beyond Volga startsevi.(1) Starchestvo, by virtue of special conditions, lefta the political stage and turned into a life-doctrine without any special pretense to political action (2). Now the moment has come again to call this political action back to life. We are called to start the building of Russia – Eurasia according to the precepts of the startsevi, charging these precepts through a new historical content.

Thus, the definition of “party” is too narrow for us; according to our ideal purposes, we are much more than any political party, including the socialists and communists. We, the organized eurasism, are a sort of special eastern order. The title “party” does not cover our internal essence, does not coincide with it. Therefore only with some disclaimers, only conditionally, we can call ourselves a “party”. We must understand that for the sake of purposes, in many situations we should act more as an order, as a spiritual association, instead of as a party. In this sense we should realize all the advantages of roman catholic or masonic tactics and to use them. There might be such constellation, when it will be much more convenient for the eurasists to act through another party, even to create a factotum known to them, to accept such or such legal form, while the eurasian core will not keep a party character. This does not contradict the possibility, under different conditions, to form a self-supporting eurasian party acting alongside with other political parties. Eventually all these are tactical problems, which are not subject to decision without taking into consideration concrete living conditions. The centre of the question is summarized in the following principle: our essence does not coincide with the nature of a political party (in the usual sense of this word) and being a party is only one of the possible forms of our activity.

2.

In order to define those conditions, at which organized eurasism should accept the external form of political party, it is necessary to distinguish two questions:

1) the question of our position and our role in a state that is not built on our image and which we, therefore, do not consider as quite answering to our ideals, and

2) the question of our place in a state which we have built by our own plan.

These questions do not quite completely differ, and from their similarity stems the vagueness of our attitude to the party principle and the possibility of dissent in our ranks. These questions we shall keep apart in the following analyisis.

As to the first question, practically it is reduced to clarify our position in the living conditions of modern Russia-Eurasia. As our starting point we consider the Soviet political system. In its present conditions we do not belong to the number of legally acting political groups. We can become such only with the change of the present political situation. We try to further define what can be the attitude of eurasism to the question of the party in the case of more or less decisive changes in the present political regime in Soviet Russia.

We might suppose the following possibilities of such change :

a) Through gradual evolution, as it is wished and supposed by the democrats, the one-party communist regime will be substituted by a multiparty regime in the western or semi-western sense of this word. The opposition will break away, this split will be legalized, then mensheviks and SR, and finally RD. will be legalized. The Soviet state will turn into something that from time to time it was possible to see in “second grade” Europe – in Bulgaria or Serbia. Is is asked, what should be our attitude to the party principle in case of some more or less long-term stabilization of such regime? It is obvious that in case of evolution by the Soviet state in the mentioned direction, we, eurasists, would not accept any conscious involvement: this is not our affair, the new regime has arisen besides our intentions as organized group. For us – were it to be – it would be a mere fact, which we assiologically disapprove, but to which we are forced to adjust to. It is thought that in the skill of adjusting to it we should learn much both from the roman catholics and from the socialists. And both of them are not the admirers of bourgeois democracy, which, however, they rather skilfully use to their purposes. In other words, with the consolidation of the mentioned regime, the moment will come for us when we shall be forced to enter the political struggle, as a definite political group among other political groups. Then the question of the transformation of eurasism in a political party becomes serious. We should not forget that the chance that is given to us might not belong to the number of those which we aspire to. This possibility is founded on the assumption of gradual fading of that reserve of energy which was created by the revolution. The progress of the Soviet state on the mentioned path would mean that the creativity of the new political forms was terminated, the revolution has died away, there appears an empire in the courtyard of Europe – which, in fact, is the wish of all our, from permission to say, “progressists”. However it does not follow that the approaching of that possibility should frighten us. We plan our life not just for the coming ten years, and we know that such a revolution, like it was in Russia, in the end can bring to the establishing of some new forms of life, even if this revolution has probably ended in a temporary reaction. The possible period of development of Russia as “second grade” Europe will be more or less short-lived. During this period we shall be forced to act as a political party alongside with other political parties. And we act as a party which aims to building a new state and to destroy the party regime. In semi-european democracy we sit not on the right side, but on extreme left side. And we are sure that we shall win. If it will be democracy in Kerensky style, we shall be the first force to overthrow it; if this democracy will be seduced by the new forms in the style of fascism, Pilsudsky regimeetc., we again shall be that major pillar, around which will sediment and crystallize the new democratic forces, and whose growth will overcome the limits common to the above mentioned european phenomena.

b) It is possible to suppose that the change of the presente Soviet regime will happen as a result of violent revolution, which will be made by one of the actual real forces playing a role in the Soviet state. And this force will be extraneous to eurasism. Eurasists will not accept neither ideological, nor actual involvement in the revolution. In Russia will ascend to the throne, say, an individual or collective Bonaparte, which will substantially accept the inheritance of the revolution, save its phraseology and absorb in himself many of its legally established and organizational forces, having however rejected communism, first of all as a social and economic system, and then, maybe, also as an ideology. Similar revolutions are known to history. They are usually made by people born out of the revolution, vigorous and strong-willed men of action, dispossessed at the same time of any principles. There was no own doctrine and ideology in Napoleon, nor there is in Mussolini, as fascists themselves understand. Such revolution would be rather favourable to our position, but only at the condition the we shall not present ourselves as a special, united political party. Those who have seized power, having stabilized the situation being poorly entitled to do this, will not suffer any intrusion into their sphere of activity from an extraneous party; but they will deeply require ideas, political principles, true titles proving their authority. Eurasists should therefore use their best efforts to gradually become the brains of this new regime, charging with new contents the decayed forms it inherited from the revolution, interpreting and recovering them. The eurasists should by all means penetrate in this new regime and with the arms of the new power build the new state.

c) At last, it is possible to suppose that the revolution will be accomplished either by a group close to eurasism, or by the same eurasists. This puts us before the necessity of immediate construction according to our own project. What would be then our attitude towards the party principle? Shall we be a “party” during the construction of the state, and shall we save the form of the party once the state will be built?

3.

Our oppositors reproach us that once in state power we are going to abolish the free regime of parties and, similarly to the communists, to declare the power of one single party, the eurasist, which would take the place of the communists. This rebuke comes not only from the “left” but, very curiously, even from the “right”. Among those that address it to us, that constitutes a genuine preoccupation of all russian emigration “parties”. Let us assume that P.N. Milyukov comes to power. Can we suppose that he would legalize in the republic the party of Markov? We doubt that he would also legalize the nikolaevtsi. And, certainly, nikolaevtsi will make same with RD. (3) We even suspect that Kerensky too would not be very generous in terms of “party freedom”, remembering the lessons of the past. In other words, everyone has idyllic dreams of recovering that order which prevailed during tsarism, when some parties were legal and other forbidden; the difference lies only in what group of parties are going to be granted “freedom” and which ones they would like to push underground. We eurasists believe that no such political tendency would be less favourable to a restoration than ours. We perfectly know that the politics of prohibition is the least and least wise of all political expedients. Only the worst political regime aims to cut under one bracket the ideological dissent of the people. The freedom in expressing opinions in all the reas of life, and in politics too, is an indispensable condition of life in any normal state. The same must also be said of the people’s self-organizing, about the so-called “union freedoms”. Our policy does not pursue the purpose of negative “prohibition” and “suppression””; it will emanate from our new, well pondered state conception, which constitutes the alpha and the omega of our state system and resolutely distinguishes it both from democratic and communist systems.

a) The eurasian state is a political formation, as we say, of demotic nature. We mean that our state is built on a deep national base and corresponds to the “national will”. If the concept of people’s sovereignty was not so worn out and any its internal sense and external charm were not lost, we would be ready to say that our state project is based on the sovereignty of the people – but not on that disorganized, anarchist sovereignty, on which western democracies (where “people’s sovereignty” = the mechanical aggregate of opinions of the separately achieved political maturity of the citizens), but on an organized and organic sovereignty. We consider as “people” or “nation” not any casual sample of citizens satisfying to the conditions of the universal electoral right, but the aggregate of historical generations, past, present and future, forming a cultural unity, realized by the state. We realize that a “nation” in such understanding is unfit to any political action, that it is unable, that it should act through any deputies, that its will should receive expression through definite real carriers However we cannot admit that order where expression of such will is considered the informal mass of all resident people nowadays having reached the age of, say, 18 or 20 years. Honest democrats know that, firstly, such “heap” is also inept, and secondly, that there is no warranty that through its lips the true nation speaks.

Modern western democracy has the features of a special, unjustifyied egocentrism of the voting body of adult citizens, which, being unorganized, is not capable to conduct any election in itself. Modern democracy is an oligarchy of resident nowadays adult generation over the nation, as a whole, an oligarchy which at the same time can not govern itself and searches for itself a deputy, a real politician. Such a figure also is the political party organizing a voting body and substituting the imaginary will with the will of a voting body. We eurasists do not recognize such system as normal. We declare: the end has come for oligarchies of disorganized masses; all ties to a self-empowered system in the issue of peoples’ representation should be resolutely abrogated. The state can not consider as the spokesmen of national will all adults in general, adult in themselves, abstracting from the real adult citizen, from any relation to who he is, where he lives and what he makes. The state should wake up from silent passivity; it should define that objective and real principle, on the basis of which the true people’s “representation” can be built – that is the real bearers of organizational state functions, valid spokesmen of national will. We want, in other words, to substitute the artificial-anarchist system of the representation of separate individuals and parties with the organic order of the representation of demands, knowledge and ideas. Therefore the political party is not necessary to us, as it is necessary to western style democracy.

The question of substituting the organic to the mechanical system of national “representation” since a long time already has arisen in western democracy. Now it is an urging issue of domestic policy in the western states, though the conservatism peculiar to democracy, the original democratic inertness and regressism in every possible way hinders the real advance of this issue in political life. We are in more favourable condition, as we are less contrained by prejudices, more free and more mobile. Besides, the idea laying at the basis of the Soviet system (though not of the Soviet practice) rather successfully solved the problem of organic “representation”. In the Soviet system the basic point is not the separate man, not the artificial union of the people, but the organic territorial member in its fullness – council, district, area, city etc., or professional association of people within the limits of these territorial units, with the national parts of the state. Such principles also are subject to further reinforcing, development and improvement in the eurasian state.

b) The European democracy is proud of founding its power on the “free” public opinion expressing the will of the majority of the “nation”. Public opinion apparently plays a considerable role in the life of the European democracies, it overthrows governments, influences the composition of parliaments, defines reference directions of politics. But what does the democratic regime define by such “public opinion”? “Public opinion” in West is the unstable, strong and very fastly changing sedicent national mood, which has taken deep roots in the people’s belief not spontaneously, but being artificially inculcated by political parties. The political party in the democratic state inspire such “public opinion” on any political issues. Parties call and awake political moods, fuel passions and cultivate them. Generally such “public opinion” is artificialy created, is inflated and does not answer neither to the interests of the different national strata, nor to the interests of the state as a whole. There are special methods for such excitable “public opinion” – it is political agitation, armed nowadays by all methods of the newest advertising technique. Because “public opinion” in democratic Europe varies as much as the weather. Today it is seduced by the side of conservatives, tomorrow – by the side of the socialists. We perfectly realize that “public opinion” cannot be something completely unmovable. Public life varies, so “public opinion” should vary too. However, the true dynamics of national belief cannot be expressed in that nervous jump of political moods, which characterizes the political life of modern democracies. Democratic “dynamics” of the public opinion is a kind of public neurasthenia, being a correct index of the disorder of modern man and of all his life. It is possible to affirm that, if the system of disorganized and unstable “public opinion” could unlimitedly dominate the life of the state, any state would dissolve and cease to exist. If western democracies are not exposed to such dissolving, it means that there is in them some corrective to the boundless dynamics of the unorganized public opinion. The textbooks of constitutional law do not speak about this corrective, but it really exists – and its existence explains why, for instance, despite of constant shift of governments, Great Britain led the same foreign policy; or, why, disregarding ups and downs of ministries in France, the foundations of the French Republic remained rather conservative, that is the same bureaucracy rules, the same administrative structure exists, etc. We want to say that in every state, even the most democratic state, there is some political constant, though its substance is shielded by nowadays magnificent scenery of the democratic regime and parliamentarist phraseology. Our eurasian state will proceed from the requirement that this constant should be validated and clearly formulated. We consciously aspire to fix in the political life of our state what western democracies diligently hide: the guiding idea of the state as a whole, its fundamental vocation, its goal. In this sense it is possible to define our state as ideocratic, or in other words, the state of the stable public opinion. We consider that in the concept of people is like embodied the aggregate of the historical generations and the true national will, the united organism which by no means cannot be recognized in the casual voting of the numerical majority of the adult citizens. This is why we also do not attribute to people’s elections any final, crucial importance, though we consider with its organism very relevant for definition of dynamics of public life. The state is a constant principle, which requires concreteness. People’s elections also is called to give the stable national will its concrete applications to the particular cases of state life.

We consider that – again, in its idea, though not in its practice – the Soviet system enables to successfully combine the substance of a stable public opinion with its dynamics. The Soviet system is composed by a dictatorship of a united party and a number of “representative” entities. The former embodies the constant principle, the latter the mobile one. The correct combination of these two principles also constitutes the primary goal of eurasist policies.

c) Our opponents accuse us to copy the communist dictatorship regime and to aim to its conversion only by transformation of the party in power in a new nobility which, like the old one, will stand above the state and govern it. A similar reproach shows all the misery and inertness of the democratic idea, which has got used to established clichés and outside of them, on the whole, has nothing to exhibit. Our new state concept considers past and present experiences, but does not make of them any kind of untouchable rule. The substance of the ruling stratum is especially characteristic of the history of Russia: it was earlier personified in nobility, and it is nowadays personified in the communist party. But neither the institute of nobility, nor the living essence of the communist party is a solution to the problems of the organization of the ruling group in a normal type of state. Nobility was based on inheritable privileges, bestowed to those who especially distinguished themselves serving the state. Nobility was not, therefore, an ideological organization, so it is doomed to spiritual obsolescence, to ideological death. Our nobility could have been saved from this destiny only in the event that it would be organized on the basis of a soil, national idea. Our nobility has not found such idea, on the contrary, it went through officialization, masonization, and has been the most active factor of our europeanization. The noblemen were our first preachers of the European revolution which, once accomplished, has exterminated its fathers up to last root. The new ruling stratum, born out of the revolution, has the advantage of the ideological integration, however to him the vast oversights are peculiar also. Its ideology is essentially false and, moreover, it is extraneous to us, borrowed from West. And, what is most important, according to its condition in the state the new ruling stratum has character of a western party, that is a private association pursuing some political ends. In the sense of legal status the communist party has not consolidated itself in any way: in the Soviet state it exists actually, but officially, in the Soviet constitution, nothing is said about it. Therefore the whole construction of the Soviet state as though bifurcates between the official institution of the soviets and the informal entities of the communist party. There are two governments – palese and secret: the soviet congress and its bodies, and the party congress and its. Such condition cannot be recognized as normal. It is necessary to push either to the ransformation of the Soviet regime in multi-party regime, or to the constitutional validation of the “party”, as the republic’s official organ. The present leaders of the republic should understand that before us there are only these two paths: taking the first means transforming Russia in similarity to a second grade Europe, taking the second is trying of to build a new kind of state.

The new kind of state demands that that public stratum – which should be the bearer of the stabilization of the public opinion from the political parties in the European sense of this word – should turn into an organic part of the state. We already saw that such parts are the territorial elements of the republic, its professional and national cells. The party in power should be collocated alongside with them as a carrier of the organic state idea. Then the above stated issue of combining the statal constant with statal dynamics is solved by organizing a proper correlation, within the soviets, between delegates from territorial and national parts and from professional organizations, and delegates from the ruling stratum (4).

Thus, in our state we substitute the parties with real social strata, thus creating the conditions at which for us parties become even technically superfluous. Our oppositors say that we want to veto the other parties and to dominate through dictatorship. But if we take the normal state in our conception, the question is not the mechanical prohibition of parties, but the complex policies directed on destroying the party regime. We shall not veto the parties, but, of course, we shall struggle at the elections aganinst that forceful unity of party programs, with that ugly party advertising, with those thoughtless receptions of promises and engagements to which the modern political party resorts. Yes, at soviet elections all these receptions will not be necessary, and besides, not any one of the present Russian insignificant parties will be able to use them. These receptions are suitable when the voters are but an amorphous mass going to the urns and voting those lists of people unfamiliar to them, which were put forward by party committees. But when the elections take place in each village, the choice will be made under the sign of concrete deals, according to the programs, instead of on promises (5). This principle of concrete deals especially dominates in the subsequent phases, when the most capable and skilled shall be selected among the delegates. The modern representatives of Russian political parties therefore are against the Soviet system, since they perfectly understand its repugnancy to the party regime. “In the Soviet system the parties have nothing to do – so down with the Soviet system”… However, if elections in the Soviet system do not need parties, they at all do not abolish the reedom of showing opinions and the struggle of different currents among the voters. At soviet elections we quite concede the possibility of differentiations and groupings. But we do not want that the voter to fix his imaginary interest to a party, we should aim so that the voter himself has understood these interests and selected the people which will appear truly capable to express the will of the nation as an organic whole.

Notes

1) Starchestvo: political-religious current which developed at the end of the XV – first half of the XVI century, taking its denomination (zavolgzhiskie startsy) from its gathering in the territory beyond Volga. It favoured ascetism, departing from the profane world, refusal of the land property of the Church. Among its ideologists were Nil Sorskij and Vassian Kosoj [translator’s note].

2) If we do not consider Dostoevsky’s attempts to detect the political program of the starchestco in his conversations with Sosum [anachoret, follower of Starchestvo].

3) Nikolaevtsi, members of the monarchist party led by Nikolay Nikolaevic(1856-1929), grandson of the czar Nikolay I..

Nikolay Evgeneevic Markov (1866-1945). Among the founders of the “Union of the Russian People” in 1911, then head of a far-right fraction in the 3rd a 4th Duma. Member of the White emigration. [translator’s note].

4) The concept of “ruling stratum” in Alekseev is identical with the concept of party, marking by itself a “cardinal point” (partem mundi) in its aim, in other words the «active part of a nation (or group of nations), its accomplished embodying ». Such party (ruling stratum) needs to be strictly distinguished from the parties of a multi-party system.

5) From what is above stated, it is possible to say that the eurasists aim to the accomplishment of such a regime, in which there would be a defined functional unnecessity of parties in the sense of a multi-party system.

Tags: Geopolitics and Eurasia, Nikolay Alekseev