The Whites began by fighting for God; they ended fighting for their own pride. The Reds began by fighting for the people; and ended fighting for their own authority. The Russian is naturally communal. We never needed Marx and his corrupted philosophy of revenge and destruction. Tolstoi and Kropotkin sought a philosophy suited to our national character. Communism emphasises the group, giving the community priority over individuals. It does not seek a balance. To survive, the world must always be in harmony. God’s greatest signs are Man and the universe itself. That is the balance we should try to find again. Human decency. If only the Jew would leave me alone. Vengeance! he cries. Russian chivalry is condemned. Tanks crush the Russian heart. Barbarian wire rips Russian flesh. Alien cunning exploits us. The Heroes of Kiev drove back the Turk and Mongol but made the city safe for their enemies. We could have developed so much. It is all lost.
They have destroyed the Russian mind, our language, the Russian heart. For a kopek’s worth of Western nonsense. They deny us our peaceful soil, our ancient cities, our Church. They go courting with Islam. How many mistakes can they make in all these years of mistakes? They breed a race of brutes who now confront the world, a hydrogen bomb in either hand, a mindless snarl upon the lips, unable to distinguish truth from lies. Dark forces threaten from within. Fear Carthage.
There were enough voices raised: Kropotkin, Tolstoi, Blok, Bely. Look inward! Look to Russia! But they looked to Germany. They came creeping back through Finland in the German train. Marks. What made Hitler threaten that great alliance? The whispering Jew? Not the Greek. I put my faith in Hitler. He betrayed us all. The Teuton always envied the Slav. He waited a thousand years until he was ready. Then he crossed the mountains at last. Marching against the Slav. Marching against Greece. They lost their centre. They always will. It is a tub of beer and a stick of pig-meat. All made sense when Turk and Teuton allied. And the British, as usual, swung this way and that, paving fifty roads to Hell. Jewish marks. They burn my soul. They brand my flesh. Let me go!
Little teeth suck the marrow from my bones. Esmé: How coarsened by despair you must have become as your life and idealism faded into the grey scum of Bolshevism. Mother: Did the Teuton kill you where I flew my first machine? Did the Teuton kill you, for I’ll swear I heard you scream? Your world flared in 1941. And then it died. The conquerors made you happy. Was it because you fought Satan all your life so whenever you saw Him marching along Kreshchatik you welcomed Him as a familiar adversary? I did not mean to lose you. Love was never in your eyes. But you were happy.
Western Europe is too easy, too warm, too soft. The hardness of our climate gives us everything - our isolation, our inner life, our language, our genius. We are lost in the crowds and the heat. Let me go back. They dispossessed us; they drove us away. Now we live in crannies. We are humiliated and mocked. We might have survived. But God deserted us. He deserted Deniken. Makhno and Hrihorieff might, like Villa and Zapata, have fought for liberals allowing freedom of religion and pushed the Bolsheviks into the Baltic, to become the émigrés. But the Whites were too proud, the Nationalists were too small-minded, and the Allies never will understand what goes on in Russia. A Russian has himself. He retreats there as the Englishman retreats into rationalism. Borrowed, foreign rationalism has always been the bane, the destruction, of the Russian soul. Faith in God and His authority provides the only true freedom: the freedom to live an inner life.
It was Makhno who avenged me. He went to Alexandriya for a parley with Hrihorieff. Makhno denounced the Ataman’s pogroms Hrihorieff laughed. He was disbelieving. Was it so important? One of Makhno’s lieutenants (Keretnik, I think) drew his Colt and shot the Ataman. Makhno finished him off. The other Anarchists killed Hrihorieff’s bodyguard. Makhno shot Grishenko between the eyes and down he went, whip and all, into the July dust of Alexandriya. Makhno, with his eloquence, won over Hrihorieff’s men in an instant. It was an old-fashioned act of bandit audacity. It impressed the remnants of the Zaporizhians, many of whom were now ragged and barefoot, for Hrihorieff had never consolidated his gains. They agreed to follow the Batko. But they were doomed. That Jew-loving Anarchist dismissed them in the end. He fled into Rumania and went to Paris, haunted by the knowledge that he had deserted Russia. He was no Nationalist, at least. He and his wife and daughter loved the whole of Russia. They spoke Russian. I met them again in Paris. It was hard for his wife. I think his daughter went back. He lived off the other émigrés. He drank the cheap French wine which makes sickly sentimentalists of everyone.
