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THE POLICY OF 'INCLUSIONARY POLITICS'

Yanov's view is confirmed in more detail in Yitzhak Brudny's book Reinventing Russia, published in 2000. (13)

(13) Yitzhak Brudny: Reinventing Russia - Russian Nationalism and the Soviet State, 1953-1991, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 2000.

According to Brudny:

'Behind the efforts to co-opt the Molodaia gvardia writers stood high-ranking neo-Stalinist members of the party apparat, especially in the Propaganda and Cultural Departments of the Central Committee of the Komsomol.' (p.61)

What he calls 'the policy of inclusionary politics' (a politics that 'included' the non-Soviet Russian patriotic theme) coincided with an attack launched on Novy Mir at the 23rd Congress, March-April 1966, when Tvardovsky was expelled from the central Committee. The immediate occasion was the publication of an article by Andrei Sinyavsky in December 1964 attacking the novel The Louse by Soviet war hero Ivan Shevtsov. But in broader terms it was a reaction to the Khrushchev period, both to the discrediting of Stalin and the attack on the Church, seen as a useful morale booster in the confrontation with the West. At a plenum of the Komosmol Central Committee, Yuri Verchenko, director of the Molodaya gvardia publshing house, had attacked works that raised concerns about prison camps, what happened to Soviet POWs etc. In 1966, the literary journal Volga was founded in Saratov, which published writers associated with Molodaya gvardia, including Lobanov. In 1982, Brudny tells us, Volga published Lobanov's Osvobozhdenie - Liberation - a denunciation of collectivisation and 'the most open Russian nationalist denunciation of Communist ideology and the entire Soviet historical experience to appear in the censored Soviet press' (p.123) resulting (p.135) in the suppression of the issue of the journal that contained the article and the dismissal of its editors). Lobanov's article had been a review of a novel by Mikhail Alekseev. In 1968, Alekseev (characterised by Yanov - 'New Right', p.51 - as a representative of 'the orthodox Stalinist Right') became editor of the journal Moskva which he used to promote 'village prose' and Molodaya gvardia writers. In the same year, Sergei Vikulov became head of Nash Sovremennik. Vikulov, from the Russian North East 'had strong personal ties with many Novy Mir associated village prose writers from the area.' He appointed Viktor Chalmaev as his Deputy Chief. (Brudny, pp.64-5)

Kozhinov has it that this showed a continuity between Nash Sovremennik and Novy Mir, but Brudny sees it as a policy of detaching these writers from the Novy Mir liberal camp. 

While all this was happening, a movement had been launched in May 1964, shortly before Khrushchev's downfall, for the study and preservation of ancient monuments, including churches (VOOPIK). At the 1965 Komsomol plenum, Vasiliy Peskov had condemned the destruction of churches, and in May 1965, Molodaya gvardia published a 'Letter of the Three' (painter Pavel Korin, sculptor Sergei Konnenkov, writer Leonid Leonov), protesting against the destruction of churches and putting forward the slogan 'Preserve our Sacred Place' which from July 1965 became the title of a regular column in the journal which called not just for the preservation of buildings but for the rehabilitation of the Orthodox Church itself. (Brudny, pp.68-9) The movement was supported by Vasiliy Shauro who became head of the Cultural Department of the Central Committee in November 1965. But he was subject to the Propaganda Committee which was split between Vladimir Stepakov, appointed in May 1966, who sympathised with this development, and Yakovlev, who opposed it. (p.63)

But Yakovlev's exile to Canada did not signify a final victory for the patriots. Far from it. The main direction of policy by 1972 was towards détente, which implied a pro-Western orientation. As Yanov put it in 1978 (p.60): 'the true lesson of the "Yakovlev affair" was [...] that someone would not allow the Establishment Right to share the fate of the Establishment Liberals [...] that the editorial board of Molodaia gvardia, which was politically defeated, nonetheless retained its personnel, its position, its ideological ammunition. What for? Only the future can answer - after Brezhnev.'

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