Cult of hate Kremlin allows to flourish

Press, 1 February 1988, Page 18

Cult of hate Kremlin allows to flourish

XAN SMILEY,

It must be one of the weirdest haunts in Moscow, the home of Dmitri Dmitrievich Vasilyev, guru of Pamyat, the history-cum-culture society that has mystified Russians and foreigners alike. Pamyat has been called comic, sinister, powerful, irrelevant, a K.G.B. front.

Recently it privately circulated a virulent attack against one of Mr Mikhail Gorbachev’s closest advisers, Mr Alexander Yakovlev. Yet despite counterattacks in the official press, not a finger has been raised against it.

Over the door of Mr Vasilyev’s flat, tied by a ribbon, hangs a bell. From a copper pot on a round table in the middle of the cluttered room hangs another, smaller, bell. In a corner, a Christmas tree glitters with baubles.

The walls are hung with icons, photographs of churches and monuments, paintings of ancestors, and a slogan in standard Soviet red that could be Lenin or the Bible: “Do not fear the truth of judgment." Four young men, two wearing copper bracelets and black Tshirts emblazoned with a picture of the übiquitous golden kolokol — the bell — lounge around, waiting on the boss. One has a Dostoevsky beard, staring eyes, long priestly hair swept straight back and a rocker’s leather jacket on which is pinned a yellow and black military medal: a veteran of 4’ 1

of the “Daily Telegraph,” reports from Moscow

Afghanistan, perhaps? No, it is a Kulikovo memento, honouring the great battle when the Tartar hordes were beaten back by the Russian narod — the people — a mere 500 years ago. Mr Vasilyev, bald on top but with light brown curls falling over his collar, is chubby-faced, with a toothbrush moustache and big beer belly. He says he is 42 but looks more than 50. He talks in torrents. Pamyat is fiercely anti-Semi-tic, harks back to Tsarism, attacks people in high Communist party places, says Mr Yakovlev is a cosmopolitan who “bows down in worship before the West.” Many people are puzzled why Pamyat is allowed to exist. Glasnost or not, attacks on politburo members are never normally tolerated. Jews in Soviet society, said Mr Vasilyev excitedly, are “a Trojan horse.” They number only 0.69 per cent of the population, but provide 20 per cent of the managers and 44 per cent of those who hold doctorates and masters' degrees. With no prompting, Mr Vasilyev read out a list, about a hundred strong, of deputy heads of Stalin’s key departments. “Not a single Russian ran the labour camps or administered the building of the White SeaBaltic Canal,” he declared, referring to a notorious slave-labour project. It was too obvious to ask who did. Tsar Nicholas 11, he implied heavily, was "ritually sacrificed,”

presumably by "you know who.” “Of course it’s a creation of a three-letter word,” — meaning the K.G.B. — says a shrewd observer. One cannot blame the K.G.B. for evep’thing mad or nasty in the Soviet Union. But in this society, anti-Semitic, quasimonarchist clubs do not exist unless somebody powerful protects or even encourages them. But why should they? First, to have a look at the sort of people who are drawn to such ideas, to monitor them. Second, to create a stick with which to beat the advocates of glasnost if they demand too much: “Look at the poison glasnost has allowed,” it can be argued. Third, and hardest to assess, is the genuine Russian ultra-nation-alism that some solid Communists (Stalin was one) think is worth tapping as a source of energy and which Pamyat does articulate. Russian anti-Semitism is as old as the Kremlin bells. Many civilised Russians will say that the Pamyat message about the need to preserve monuments and history is good, while the antiSemitism is "nonsense, of course.” But then they are often liable to add peculiar hints that the wilder part of the Pamyat message touches a chord with most Russians. Whoever is really behind the movement, and I tend towards the grimmer interpretation, it smells bad.