Of all the nationalist movements that have fired the independence of Eastern Europe and destroyed communist rule, the Russian variant has been the slowest to assert itself.
So long as Russians like Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian President Boris Yeltsin appeared to be in command, there was little need for such nationalism -- and much that Russian nationalists were embarrassed to support or defend.
Even after the attempted coup of last August launched the climactic contest between communists and democrats for control of the Kremlin, there was still no room for Russian nationalism to emerge as a unifying idea.
That is changing.
The Sixth Congress of Peopled Deputies showed how rapidly the "national idea" is gaining ground, and how numerous the "patriotic forces" have become. Parliamentary votes indicated that on some issues, the nationalists mustered at least one-third of the deputies. But on other issues, without the communists, they mobilized a majority. In the view of the nationalist deputies, they have already eclipsed what is left of the Communist Party. In the view of non-communists in Parliament, the nationalists are Russia's "new right".
Outside Parliament, where public support for communists is diminishing fast, the nationalist movement can attract support from democratic parties and the military.
There are many Russian politicians who want to harness this movement for their own rise to power.
Meet 49-year-old Alexander Sterligov, a former KGB General who is widely viewed in Moscow as the man most capable of unifying the many different ideas and organizations going by nationalistic names. The chairman of the Russian National Assembly (Sobor), Sterligov here talks for the first time to a Western newspaper.
For the interview, the soft-spoken general wore civilian clothes; a trim double-breasted suit, with a paisley tie discreetly knotted at a pressed white collar -- hardly the uniform of the old nomenklatura, nor of the new entrepreneur.
The silver flecks in his thick hair convey photogenic authority. The high cheek-bones, grey-green eyes and chiselled jaw signal for the television audience an unmistakable Slav.
Retired before he turned 50, he was a counter-intelligence officer of the KGB for 26 years, specializing in defense of Russia's economic and technological secrets.
For two years he watched from the pinnacle of the Soviet government as authority collapsed around him. From the KGB he became a senior member of staff in the Soviet Council of Ministers, headed by Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov. Before Ryzhkov fell, he had joined the staff of Russian Prime Minister Ivan Silayev.
He participated in the defense of the White House during the August putsch, and when Yeltsin replaced Silayev, he became a staff advisor to Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, resigning that post last December.
He is now a politician running against Yeltsin.
This month, Sterligov will lead the first congress of Sobor to the launch of a national political party, to be followed by a campaign for a million signatures to force parliamentary elections. If Yeltsin blocks the move, as Sterligov anticipates, he says massive civil disobedience will follow until elections can be held.
Come next winter, he says, it will be impossible for the present government and Parliament to co-exist. Without elections, and a new Parliament and new government policy to follow, he believes the country is heading for war. "It is a pity that the democratic process began in Russia with a lot of hopes. That process gave us hope for the resurrection of Russia", Gen. Sterligov says. "But now that process - has become destructive".
"If there is no organization that can help Russian people define their place, and halt the current process from leading to war, so the country will go to the dogs -- and to war".
Sterligov has read the papers of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Russian ministries of economics, agriculture and social protection. For him, the arithmetic is clear:
o By year's end, the production of food will not have risen, but prices will have increased at least tenfold.
o By year end, most industrial enterprises will be insolvent.
o Unemployment will total 2. 2 million by December.
o Living standards of most Russians will drop to those of Stalin's 1930s.
o The street markets will have turned to the sale of personal possessions and stolen goods.
It is then, Sterligov says, one opinion will emerge -- Russia has been betrayed.
Says Sterligov, "It is impossible to imagine in what way the president can pull the country out of the crisis -- the same president who has deceived the people on all points he has promised".
Two ideas fire Gen. Sterligov strategy to win power by next winter.
The first is that Yeltsin and the Russian democrats who support him have failed, just as the communists who preceded him failed, to protect and serve Russia's national interests. No alliance with either is now possible, he says -- nor necessary in a popular campaign to win new elections.
Acknowledging he was a member of the Communist Party, he adds: "it is our tragedy that this communist ideology is hostile to the old national traditions of Russia. This ideology brought a great disaster to out country. We have lost the best part of our people. and so it is quite impossible to collaborate with people who are carriers of this ideology. We can collaborate only on the patriotic basis".
He dismisses the possibility that if the Yeltsin government falls, the financial support of the West will be withdrawn, or that Western threats to withhold credits will sway most Russians.
"A consensus on the transformation of our economy to the market is solid. We also need foreign capital". . . But the great part of the help will be used to cover debts that are growing".
In Sterligov's assessment, the price and credit policies of the Yeltsin government this year, like the Silayev and Pavlov governments of a year ago, have only added to the foreign dependence of the Russian economy. If they "did not kill the peasant with elevated prices for equipment, he would not need food from the storage bins of NATO".
His second idea is that only by forming a new political consensus on "a patriotic basis" can a Russian government and Parliament represent the underlying views of the majority of Russian people, and enjoy the trust needed to sustain more sacrifices.
Sterligov is already a recognized figure among deputies in the congress. He says he is prepared to form an alliance with the principal party leaders in Parliament, including those from the Democratic Russia movement which has been Yeltsin's power base.
There is a condition, though. "Democratic Russia brought Russia to this crisis", says Sterligov. "They have to convince the people they are not just looking for their own personal place in politics, especially in the national movement".
He rejects the government's charge that the opposition to its policies is communist-inspired, driven by the attempt to hang on to elite privileges.
"When the leaders of our present government say in every speech that the old communist nomenklatura prevents them from doing things, they are either lying intentionally, or they don't understand. The resistance is from the professionals who try to prevent the final destruction of the economy. A professional cannot fail to see the stupidity and the absurdity of this policy, and so every professional in his place tries to save what is possible".
The general is not ready to go into details of his economic program until after the founding party congress opens on May 15.
But he is clear that the foreign and defense policies of the governmet have "divided the Russian people by artificial frontiers", and left Russia and the former Soviet republics open to attack. Where Gen. Sterligov and the Sobor propose to draw Russia's borders and how they intend to defend them -- these too are details of a policy that is to be formed, debated and published next week. For a policy he describes as "keeping the Navy in port", he blames Marshal Evgeny Shaposhnikov, the former Soviet defense minister and commander of Russian forces. "The rating of this smiling man in the Army is perhaps 2 percent. A pilot Marshal Shaposhnikov was an Air Force officer never should play a role that cannot belong to him".
Support for Sterligov is reportedly high among Russian military men. He explains that under existing law they cannot form a movement of their own nor join the new parties. Nonetheless, his view -- one supported by many deputies in Parliament -- is that the Russian military will stay out of politics unless the government acts unconstitutionally, or there is a danger the republics now forming the Russian Federation will attempt to secede, as the Soviet republics did last year.
It is that threat, the danger of the further unravelling of Russia itself, which is the most powerful element in the appeal of new figures like Sterligov. He is convinced that Yeltsin encouraged and exploited last year's dissolution of the Soviet Union for his own power, but cannot stop the same process from occurring again.
Sterligov is confident that before the winter returns, he can persuade most Russians he is the man who can.
So long as Russians like Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and Russian President Boris Yeltsin appeared to be in command, there was little need for such nationalism -- and much that Russian nationalists were embarrassed to support or defend.
Even after the attempted coup of last August launched the climactic contest between communists and democrats for control of the Kremlin, there was still no room for Russian nationalism to emerge as a unifying idea.
That is changing.
The Sixth Congress of Peopled Deputies showed how rapidly the "national idea" is gaining ground, and how numerous the "patriotic forces" have become. Parliamentary votes indicated that on some issues, the nationalists mustered at least one-third of the deputies. But on other issues, without the communists, they mobilized a majority. In the view of the nationalist deputies, they have already eclipsed what is left of the Communist Party. In the view of non-communists in Parliament, the nationalists are Russia's "new right".
Outside Parliament, where public support for communists is diminishing fast, the nationalist movement can attract support from democratic parties and the military.
There are many Russian politicians who want to harness this movement for their own rise to power.
Meet 49-year-old Alexander Sterligov, a former KGB General who is widely viewed in Moscow as the man most capable of unifying the many different ideas and organizations going by nationalistic names. The chairman of the Russian National Assembly (Sobor), Sterligov here talks for the first time to a Western newspaper.
For the interview, the soft-spoken general wore civilian clothes; a trim double-breasted suit, with a paisley tie discreetly knotted at a pressed white collar -- hardly the uniform of the old nomenklatura, nor of the new entrepreneur.
The silver flecks in his thick hair convey photogenic authority. The high cheek-bones, grey-green eyes and chiselled jaw signal for the television audience an unmistakable Slav.
Retired before he turned 50, he was a counter-intelligence officer of the KGB for 26 years, specializing in defense of Russia's economic and technological secrets.
For two years he watched from the pinnacle of the Soviet government as authority collapsed around him. From the KGB he became a senior member of staff in the Soviet Council of Ministers, headed by Prime Minister Nikolai Ryzhkov. Before Ryzhkov fell, he had joined the staff of Russian Prime Minister Ivan Silayev.
He participated in the defense of the White House during the August putsch, and when Yeltsin replaced Silayev, he became a staff advisor to Vice President Alexander Rutskoi, resigning that post last December.
He is now a politician running against Yeltsin.
This month, Sterligov will lead the first congress of Sobor to the launch of a national political party, to be followed by a campaign for a million signatures to force parliamentary elections. If Yeltsin blocks the move, as Sterligov anticipates, he says massive civil disobedience will follow until elections can be held.
Come next winter, he says, it will be impossible for the present government and Parliament to co-exist. Without elections, and a new Parliament and new government policy to follow, he believes the country is heading for war. "It is a pity that the democratic process began in Russia with a lot of hopes. That process gave us hope for the resurrection of Russia", Gen. Sterligov says. "But now that process - has become destructive".
"If there is no organization that can help Russian people define their place, and halt the current process from leading to war, so the country will go to the dogs -- and to war".
Sterligov has read the papers of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the Russian ministries of economics, agriculture and social protection. For him, the arithmetic is clear:
o By year's end, the production of food will not have risen, but prices will have increased at least tenfold.
o By year end, most industrial enterprises will be insolvent.
o Unemployment will total 2. 2 million by December.
o Living standards of most Russians will drop to those of Stalin's 1930s.
o The street markets will have turned to the sale of personal possessions and stolen goods.
It is then, Sterligov says, one opinion will emerge -- Russia has been betrayed.
Says Sterligov, "It is impossible to imagine in what way the president can pull the country out of the crisis -- the same president who has deceived the people on all points he has promised".
Two ideas fire Gen. Sterligov strategy to win power by next winter.
The first is that Yeltsin and the Russian democrats who support him have failed, just as the communists who preceded him failed, to protect and serve Russia's national interests. No alliance with either is now possible, he says -- nor necessary in a popular campaign to win new elections.
Acknowledging he was a member of the Communist Party, he adds: "it is our tragedy that this communist ideology is hostile to the old national traditions of Russia. This ideology brought a great disaster to out country. We have lost the best part of our people. and so it is quite impossible to collaborate with people who are carriers of this ideology. We can collaborate only on the patriotic basis".
He dismisses the possibility that if the Yeltsin government falls, the financial support of the West will be withdrawn, or that Western threats to withhold credits will sway most Russians.
"A consensus on the transformation of our economy to the market is solid. We also need foreign capital". . . But the great part of the help will be used to cover debts that are growing".
In Sterligov's assessment, the price and credit policies of the Yeltsin government this year, like the Silayev and Pavlov governments of a year ago, have only added to the foreign dependence of the Russian economy. If they "did not kill the peasant with elevated prices for equipment, he would not need food from the storage bins of NATO".
His second idea is that only by forming a new political consensus on "a patriotic basis" can a Russian government and Parliament represent the underlying views of the majority of Russian people, and enjoy the trust needed to sustain more sacrifices.
Sterligov is already a recognized figure among deputies in the congress. He says he is prepared to form an alliance with the principal party leaders in Parliament, including those from the Democratic Russia movement which has been Yeltsin's power base.
There is a condition, though. "Democratic Russia brought Russia to this crisis", says Sterligov. "They have to convince the people they are not just looking for their own personal place in politics, especially in the national movement".
He rejects the government's charge that the opposition to its policies is communist-inspired, driven by the attempt to hang on to elite privileges.
"When the leaders of our present government say in every speech that the old communist nomenklatura prevents them from doing things, they are either lying intentionally, or they don't understand. The resistance is from the professionals who try to prevent the final destruction of the economy. A professional cannot fail to see the stupidity and the absurdity of this policy, and so every professional in his place tries to save what is possible".
The general is not ready to go into details of his economic program until after the founding party congress opens on May 15.
But he is clear that the foreign and defense policies of the governmet have "divided the Russian people by artificial frontiers", and left Russia and the former Soviet republics open to attack. Where Gen. Sterligov and the Sobor propose to draw Russia's borders and how they intend to defend them -- these too are details of a policy that is to be formed, debated and published next week. For a policy he describes as "keeping the Navy in port", he blames Marshal Evgeny Shaposhnikov, the former Soviet defense minister and commander of Russian forces. "The rating of this smiling man in the Army is perhaps 2 percent. A pilot Marshal Shaposhnikov was an Air Force officer never should play a role that cannot belong to him".
Support for Sterligov is reportedly high among Russian military men. He explains that under existing law they cannot form a movement of their own nor join the new parties. Nonetheless, his view -- one supported by many deputies in Parliament -- is that the Russian military will stay out of politics unless the government acts unconstitutionally, or there is a danger the republics now forming the Russian Federation will attempt to secede, as the Soviet republics did last year.
It is that threat, the danger of the further unravelling of Russia itself, which is the most powerful element in the appeal of new figures like Sterligov. He is convinced that Yeltsin encouraged and exploited last year's dissolution of the Soviet Union for his own power, but cannot stop the same process from occurring again.
Sterligov is confident that before the winter returns, he can persuade most Russians he is the man who can.