racy in a speech made in Paris five years ago: “I thereforenthink that the present dialog about a future democracy innRussia is simply idle dispute; and that freedom will come tonour country before democracy; if we will be able to achievenfreedom we will then decide which system we will have innthe future, but that time is still very far off.” How similar allnthis is to the Soviet negation of “the formal democracy ofnthe bourgeois world,” the Soviet cerhtude that only if onenpossesses the “one true ideology” can one comprehend thendeep essence of things.nHow can one not remember the brilliant G. D. Fedotov’snwords: “We live among people who have made out of thennegation of Bolshevism their creed. In essence many of usnare fully ready for an authoritarian system—only not ancommunist one, of course. For many what is more importantnis not freedom, but the symbols in whose namenfreedom is violated. They prefer the symbol of the nation tonthe symbol of the proletariat, the two-headed eagle to thenhammer and side.”nIt is completely consistent from a national-authoritariannstandpoint to proclaim right-wing dictatorships in the Philippinesnand South Korea to be bastions of anticommunism.nWhereas workers’ strikes and the demands of the intelligentsianfor freedom of speech and free elections in Poland andnother countries are viewed positively, these same workers’nstrikes and statements of the intelligentsia in right-wingnauthoritarian countries are regarded, in typical Soviet spirit,nas provocations by communist agents. It turns out that thenthreat from neighboring communist countries justifies selflimitationnof freedom: the introduction of a dictatorship. InnSouth Vietnam, this was exactly how they justified thensevere limitation of democratic freedoms and the postponementnof free elections as far back as Ngo Din Diem’s time.nThere is no historical example of a .country falling underncommunist rule where democracy was not “self-limited,”nwhere the Communist Party had not been banned. Rightwingnauthoritarian countries are simply the fifth column ofncommunist totalitarianism. A struggle is taking place betweenndemocracy and totalitarianism, and any “selflimitation”nof democracy and freedom is only to the benefitnof totalitarianism. From this perspective, the prohibition ofnthe Communist Party is the first step toward a communistndictatorship. Whereas authoritarian countries with weakndemocratic traditions easily become communist totalitarianism,nall our experience in opposing communist dictatorshipsnin Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union shows thatnthe only direcdon in which a movement away fromncommunist totalitarianism is possible is toward a legitimatendemocrahc, pluralishc system, never an authoritarian system.nThe priest Meerson-Aksenov eloquently wrote on thenreasons for this: “A new and a very firm basis for democracynhas appeared on the Soviet scene, a basis that it seems thatnvery many countries and cultures with long liberal traditionsnlack. This basis is the experience of totalitarianism,nideological demagoguery, and universal suffering, the experiencenof the tragic absence of individual rights in the face ofnforce.”nDespite the urging of Solzhenitsyn and people of likenmind, it appears that this experience of totalitarianism willnbe the strongest obstacle to the emergence of authoritarianismnin Russia or in any other country that has enduredncommunist totalitarianism. All of us on earth have absolutelynequal rights, independent of any national affiliation.nIt is quite symptomatic that an advanced, developed countrynsuch as Sweden is conducting a very successful campaignnto ensure that not only Swedish citizens but alsonworkers from southern European countries who come tonSweden for a limited hme freely participate in political lifenand enjoy equal rights. I believe that if the democraticnworld defeats totalitarianism, there will be no ethnic conglomerates,nno states based on the national principle. Onlyncultures will remain national. A polarization of totalitarianismnand democracy, not of totalitarianism and nationalism,nis indeed occurring in our time. The so-called renaissancenof nationalism is a return to the original frame of referencenfrom whence the triumphal procession of totalitarianismnbegan.nThe ideological conflict between adherents of pluralismnand democracy on one hand, and Solzhenitsyn with hisnnationalism on the other, is much more serious than thenconflict between nationalism and communism. In thenlatter case it is a question only of a change in ideology; innthe former case it concerns the destruction of thenauthoritarian-totalitarian structure itself so that all ideologiesnmay exist alongside each other, including Marxist.nIncidentally, it would be very intereshng to see how Russiannnationalists would fare with Ukrainian nationalists, fornexamiple, not in the abstract sense of recognizing the right ofneach nationality to a separate state, but in a quite concretensense—the division of territory. There are almost as manynsuch problems in the world as there are peoples, evennwithout the constant threat of communist totalitarianism.nnnIn the forthcoming issue of Chronicles of Culture:nThe Old Federalismn”For the Founding Fithcrs, the bedrock of republicanismnwas not the mass political participation of the abstractnindi iduals so dear to modern democratic theory. Rather,nrepublicanism was defined b the freedom and selfdeterminationnof communities of men, pre-existing historicalKnin all the complexity and differentiation of theirn-from “Ihe Republican Commmiity of Virtue”nbv CIvde WilsonnFred Chappell on the New South realism of Jill McCorklenBryce Christensen on Mormons in the modern worldnOtto Scott on disaffected traditionalistsnJUNE 1985/25n