Black Hundred

Booknews

Laqueur, a leading authority on Russia and fascism, is currently associated with the Center for Strategic and International Studies and with the Journal of Contemporary History. He warns of a growing extreme right-wing presence in Russia, backed by the old communist establishment, traces its origins and manifestations, and considers the implications for Russia and the world of its current strength. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Gilbert Taylor

If what Laqueur presents is true, 1917 merely put into suspended animation Russia's nationalist groups that are now breaking out in varied degrees of feverishness. The most rabid antecedents, of course, were the notorious Black Hundred's perpetration of pogroms in 1905-06. They're back as the Union of the Russian People, distributing forged trash like "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion", and publishing genuine trash written by Goebbels and Hitler. A bit less paranoid are the Slavophiles in the tradition of Dostoevsky and Solzhenitsyn, debating what Russia's world mission now is, and its obligations to compatriots suddenly stranded as minorities in other countries by the collapse of the empire. The Orthodox church seems to be the least bothered by Russia's post-Communist lot, but its credibility as a vessel of Christian ethics or Russian nationality is too compromised from decades of secret police penetration. These and other groups, from Cossacks to occultists, all have their newspapers and ideas for healing Russia's spirit--economics do not seem to concern them--which Laqueur has been assiduously reading. An interim report, Laqueur's summary reads like another extended bibliographical essay stemming from a career-long study of nationalism, but this may garner more than usual interest because of the overt anti-Semitic character of the Russian right.