sentiments allow the individual to blame his failure on thenreal or imaginary privileges and communal network of thenother group. Both tendencies feed further expansion ofnnationalism, which is, therefore — in Tsarist Russia, in thenSoviet Union, in Africa, in the United States, and everywherenelse — a platform for self-generating distribution andnredistribution of socioeconomic mobility.nAnti-Semitism in Tsarist Russia, as elsewhere in Europe,nincluding the notorious pogroms of the 1880’s-1900’s, was antypical manifestation of the desire of the Gentile businessncommunities to monopolize rapidly developing markets.nBusinessmen found assistance in the nationalistic groups innthe administration on the local and central level in theirnattempt to eliminate tough competitors by physical means.nOn the Russian political scene of that period, pogroms werenideologically instigated by the two extreme parties. Thenprecedent was established by the left-wing terrorists of thensocialist underground, “The People’s Will,” who murderednTsar Alexander II in 1881 and circulated leaflets in whichnthey blamed the Jews, as a capitalist minority, for variousnRussian economic problems. The line was followed by thenostensibly right-wing “Union of the Russian People,” betternknown as the Black Hundreds, who carried on generalnpropaganda for Russian blue-collar workers to strike againstnexploitation by Russian and Jewish capitalists. In the Tsaristngovernment there was a long struggle between nationalisticnbureaucrats, who functioned as protection racketeers on thengrowing Russian markets, and laissez-faire groups whonworked hard to eliminate nationalistic restrictions and toncurb the anticapitalist lobbies of the right.nFor 80 years, historians of pogroms did not pay attentionnto the fact that the most active in the pogroms were retailnand city-market traders, shopkeepers, salesmen, fishwives,nstreet hawkers, and the like. Was it an irrational outburst ofnRussian spiritual traditions, as some sophisticates would tellnyou at Ivy League seminars? Rubbish. The times of thenpogroms were the periods of the highest degree of civil rightsnrhetoric in Russian history. What was lacking was a sufficientlynrooted laissez-faire consciousness in the local populationnand effective, nonnationalistic police committed to thenpreservation of the market. When Solzhenitsyn’s main hero,nPeter A. Stolypin, took over the Russian government inn1906 and reorganized the police, pogroms in Russia stoppednfor good. They reemerged in the summer of 1917 when,nunder the Provisional government, the police disappearednand anticapitalist propaganda flourished.nSolzhenitsyn in August 1914 developed a key insightnthat, in his own words, the Black Hundreds and the RednHundreds shouldered Russian economic development fromnthe free-market path and worked hard to smash it. There isnan abundant literature on the feudal right. Less explored isnthe derivation of the anticapitalist right from the businessncommunity, on various stages of economic development,nwhich worked to restrict market access for alien economicnforces.nI want to emphasize here that we are dealing with anuniversal socioeconomic phenomenon. Anti-Semitism didnand will exist wherever members of various ethnic groupsncould employ the institutions to restrict the markets for Jewsnand monopolize markets for themselves. Pogroms did andnwill exist wherever these members could secure the protecÂÂntion of the state and of the local administration to beat thenJews out of the market. It takes decades of capitalisticndevelopment before people recognize that they are interestednin security, equality, and prosperity of the middlemennminorities not so much because pogroms are abominable,nbut because people will get better prices on the markets withnbroader competition. Unfortunately, it takes even morendecades before educated members of the Jewish communitynrecognize that the security, equality, and prosperity of thenJews derive not from good intentions of the elites of the hostncountries, but from the developed market instincts of thenhost populations and from an environment in which thenonly function of the state is to protect the freedom of thenmarket.nThe various kinds of nationalism in the Soviet Union —nas well as Soviet anti-Semitism — are obviously not Russiannaberrations of socialism, nor the continuity of specificnRussian traditions. Soviet nationalisms and anti-Semitismnrepresent logical socialist reactions of more numerous andnmore powerful interest groups who employ the state in ordernto compete with each other and with Jews for education,npositions, and rewards. This nationalism is, of course, morenembittered and aggressive in a country where all well-paid,nprestigious jobs and promotions are concentrated in the statenbureaucracy.nThe security, equality, and prosperity of the Jews derivennot from good intentions of the eUtes of the hostncountries, but from the developed market instincts ofnthe host populations and from an environment innwhich the only function of the state is to protect thenfreedom of the market.nFor Solzhenitsyn, preferential social mobility, ethnicnsubsidies and privileges, restrictions and quotas, protectionnrackets and hooligans at the market gates, are detestable andnintolerable to the highest degree, not only because theynviolate the rights of minorities, but also and no less becausenthey corrupt and doom to protracted failure those nationalitiesnwho practice them. Such is also the position of ThomasnSowell, who argues that persecution of the Chinese innMalaysia and preferential mobility for the Malaysians actually,nin terms of economic development, hurt the Malaysians;nand the same argument applies to the Jews and the Russiansnin prerevolutionary Russia.nA simple and unequivocal test of Russian nationalism isngiven by the attitude towards promotions within, andnmonopolization of, the Soviet political system. Real Russiannnationalists call for Russian intellectuals and youth tonpenetrate and overwhelm the state bureaucracy, thus takingnthe lion’s share of the power market. Solzhenitsyn in hisnessay, “The Smatterings,” in From Under the Rubble, callsnthe intellectuals and the youth, the Russian first andnforemost, to withdraw from the system, take simple jobs,ngive up any participation in communist institutions, even atnthe expense of not receiving any formal education. One cannsay many things about Solzhenitsyn, but a Russian national-nnnOCTOBER 19881 15n
January 1975April 21, 2022By The Archive
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