Shades of WhiternRussia’s New Right Oppositionrnby Wayne Allensworthrn”M: ankind is in crisis . . . a long crisis which began 300,rn.and in some places, 400 years ago, when peoplernturned away from religion…. It is a crisis which led the Eastrnto Communism and the West to a pragmatic society. It is therncrisis of materialism.” Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.rnFollowing the collapse of communism, Russia finds herselfrnan orphan of the disintegrated Soviet Empire. She has embarkedrnon a course of reform that is essentially a search for arnnew identity. Boris Yeltsin’s “team” of Westernizing reformersrnhad hoped to integrate Russia into the Global Village throughrnthe auspices of the IMF and the World Bank and through thernembrace of democratic ideology. The government’s programrnhas been met with opposition not only from the old nomenklaturarnand the neocommunists, but from a nascentrn”national-patriotic” movement. This amorphous movementrnopposes not just specific points of the government’s policy, butrnthe general cultural direction of integrationism. Its battlernwith the government is a struggle over Russian identity, andrnmuch of its criticisms echo those of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn,rnwho may well become the intellectual and spiritual center ofrna movement that has yet to adequately define itself.rnAt the April 1992 Congress of People’s Deputies, BorisrnYeltsin and his partisans encountered staunch opposition fromrna group whose primary goal was to block the continuation ofrn”team” leader Egor Caydar’s “shock therapy” approach to economicrnreform. The pro-Yeltsin press was quick to brand thernopposition “red-brown,” meaning neocommunist or chauvinist-rnfascist. What this political tar-brushing missed was thernWayne Allensworth is an information officer at the ForeignrnBroadcast Information Service in Washington, D.C.rn”white” element inherent in the opposition.rnRussia’s whites, led by the Christian Democrats and ConstitutionalrnDemocrats, or Cadets, are traditionalists who fear,rnamong other things, the secular Westernizing of Russia by thernyouthful cosmopolites of Yeltsin’s “team” and the concomitantrnloss of what remains of Russia’s national identity. It is a mistakernto dismiss all of them as extremists, for other governmentrncritics such as Vice President Alexander Rutskoy, who have notrnstained themselves with choosing the “red-browns” for bedfellows,rnare espousing a similar line that stresses Russia’s uniquerncultural identity.rnThe “national-patriotic” opposition composed of “whites”rnand “center-rightists” such as Rutskoy has struck the chord ofrnnational identity, and its resonance is being felt across Russia.rnRecent polling shows that Russians are reluctant to follow thern”Western model” wholesale, that interest in traditional religionrnis growing, and that the growing phenomenon of keen interestrnin, and sympathy with, the deposed and murdered (somernwould say martyred) Czar Nicholas II denotes a people thirstyrnfor the sustenance that only the elixir of national identity canrnprovide. The national-patriots’ lack of a philosophical standard-rnbearer may soon be assuaged by the return to Russia ofrnAleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who could become the moral compassrnof a patriotic movement too often associated with the spiritualrnstain of anti-Semitism and imperialism.rnIn pre-revolutionary Russia, the peasantry, clergy, nobility,rnand middle class provided the pillars on which the patrimonialrnczarist state rested. Russia’s new national-patriots see themselvesrnas the inheritors of this tradition, but not without thernreservations that come from the passage of time, the historicalrnimpossibility (and undesirability) of reconstituting the ancienrnAUGUST 1993/25rnrnrn