Russian Regress: Reading Victor Zaslavsky in a Time of War

In the midst of tragedy, the spectacle of European neo-Nazis struggling to take a common “position” on the Russian invasion of Ukraine affords comic relief. The invaders’ anti-western, anti-democratic rhetoric and calls for punishing “purification” are as congenial to them as to some autocratic politicians and heads of state, but characterization of the invasion as a fight against “Nazis” and “Nazification” presents difficulties.

In addition to describing a successful student campaign to rid themselves of an unpopular professor involving defensive denunciation, lies, threats, and support of the Tsar, Herzen’s Memoirs contain a thought-provoking observation on the division of the university’s professors and students into “two camps or strata who quietly hated each other”. One “looked upon Europe in the same way as provincials look upon those who live in the capital, with deference and a feeling of our own inferiority”, “blushing for our peculiarities and trying to conceal them”, ready to “pretend to agree” with a Liberal or Legitimist; the other, “servile in their patriotism, as uncouth as seminarists”, spoke no language but Russian and “indulged in an immoderate consumption of liquor” (Herzen 1982: 91–94, 97).

In Russia, this line carries both Communist and Scriptural association. When Moses asks what he should answer when asked by the Israelites who has sent him, the Divine Name offered in response takes the form of the first person of the verb to be (Exodus 3:13–14). The Hebrew verb has no present tense, and some translations render the Divine Name as “I am, I was, I will be”. (Rosa Luxemburg substituted revolution for the Scriptural voice in words penned the evening before her execution: “Tomorrow the revolution will…raise itself with a rattle and announce…to your terror: I was, I am, I shall be!”)

On the background to this schism, and condemnation of the Russian Patriarch’s doctrine of “Russian World” as heresy, see Cunningham 2022 and Jaulmes 2022.