The following is a complete, unabridged translation of a document obtained in Moscow in 1989. The manifesto belongs to a Pamyat group that clearly shares many of the views of other groups outlined in my article published elsewhere in this issue, though it reveals a heavier emphasis on the Orthodox Church.

Russian nationalists in the Soviet Union have, of course, always claimed to speak and act on behalf of the narod, the common folk, but the folk they have had in mind have been largely the inhabitants, and particularly the older inhabitants, of the fast-disappearing traditional Russian village. Aware that this narod has indeed been vanishing, Russian nationalist writers and publicists have stressed that the task at hand is to graft the “ethics and esthetics,” the accumulated wisdom and mores of this traditionalist populace, onto the life of deracinated modern Soviet man. The really existing and largely urbanized Russian narod—factory workers, miners, truck drivers, cashiers, and waitresses—has remained beyond the purview of most nationalists, with the exception of a few like the gifted writer and filmmaker Vasilii Shukshin (d. 1974), who focused upon the plight of a people torn away from its roots.

Since May 1987 when the Russian nationalist group Pamyat sponsored a number of demonstrations in Moscow, it has been roundly condemned in both the Soviet and Western media for its self-declared anti-Zionism and alleged antisemitism. This rare unanimity of usually opposite views should warrant a pause for sound skepticism and thoughtful analysis. Strangely enough, while Western reaction to Pamyat has been long on condemnation, it remains short on analysis and on understanding of both Pamyat and its condemnation in the Soviet press.

The Patriotic Front Pamyat has received a name recognition and notoriety in the Soviet and western academic literature and press which is unrivaled to this day by any other Russian nationalist organization. The vast majority of observers view Pamyat as a neo-fascist or neo-Stalinist movement. This view of Pamyat is often reenforced by drawing links between the Front and conservatives in the Party and bureaucracy. Thus, many see Pamyat either as a vehicle for conservative reaction from “above” or as a manifestation from “below” of a significant segment of the Russian population opposed to the decentralizing, liberalizing, and westernizing tendencies of perestroika. More often than not, Pamyat is viewed as both.

For veterans of the Russian winter, the term “thaw” will ever remain an appropriate metaphor for the waning of periods of control and repression. Unfortunately, many Soviet political thaws have given way quickly to resurgent winters. Perhaps most significant in the current Soviet thaw, the policies of glasnost and perestroika associated with Mikhail Gorbachev, has been the extent to which Soviet society has been invited to participate in it. Society, in its turn, has responded with the creation of numerous grassroots, unofficial social-action groups (samodeiatelnye obshchestvennye organizatsii).

American citizens have had over two hundred years to judge the differences between liberty and license, but for Russians freedom of expression is a new, heady, unsettling experience. Glasnost has not only permitted them to print liberal, democratic sentiments, but opened up a Pandora's Box of suppressed anger and frustration at what many Russians consider the systematic destruction of their culture during the Soviet period. An ugly side to this eruption of patriotic outrage has resulted in the public expression of violent hostility to the tiny fraction (less than 1%) of the Soviet population who are Jewish. It is in this context that Ogonek's sophisticated handling of certain unsavory aspects of the Russian nationalist movement deserves special attention. Under the guidance of its chief editor, Vitalii Korotich, the weekly magazine has not limited its coverage to such neo-Nazi organizations as Pamyat (Memory) and “Otechestvo” (Fatherland), but focussed attention also on the important role in fomenting antisemitism being played by certain prominent members of an immensely important but little known organization, the Russian Republic Writers' Union. Ogonek has handled both sources of antisemitism with the traditional weapons of democratic pluralism: exposure to public scrutiny, and deflation through satire and ridicule.