Rising

by Fenek Solère

  Our era is testing us.

  Can you go out in the square?

  Do you dare go out on the square

  At the agreed time?

  ‘It was a song about the defiance of the Decembrists, performed in May 2012 in front of St Isaacs.’

  ‘And the underground here, is it strong?’

  ‘There’s some splinter groups from Sergey Kurginan’s Young Guard against Orangism, and Vladimir Yermolaev’s Movement Against Illegal Immigration.’

  ‘Wasn’t the immigration movement banned and Yermolaev detained?’

  ‘During the so-called Snow-Revolution, yes. But revolutionary movements grow here like a virus. The Great Mosque’, her finger pointing over the Neva, ‘is a call to arms. Ever since the times of Pushkin and Turgenev, the city has been ripe for insurrection. Now there is also Krylov’s Russian Social Movement and Oreshkin’s Union of Right Forces.’

  ‘And the objectives of the movement you are involved with?’

  ‘To return Russia to the Russians.’

  ‘A worthy goal.’

  ‘Our aims have been generally consistent since the Society of St Cyril and St Methodius and Ivan Kireyevsky’s Society of Wisdom Lovers, Lyubomurdy, to foment Pravoslavyni, Orthodox patriotism, and to strengthen national self-consciousness, natsionalnoe samosznanie. I agree with Vladimir Skvortsov that the clergy are a dependable force with “deeply national and patriotic commitments representing supremacy in the face of the rootless and cosmopolitan intelligentsia”. Even many of the early Decembrist leaders who were imprisoned here, people like Pavel Pestel, held very strong nationalist views. Some of our historians, like Nikolai Knedamzin, argued then that every Russian should have a piece of land, even if that was at the price of serfdom, military dictatorship, or the sacrifice of human rights.’

  Tom’s face balked at the idea. Iryna shrugged.

  ‘Personal freedoms do not feed your babies.’

  ‘Yes, but . . .’

  ‘Russia has always strived to develop a fundamentally non-European state structure, a fusion of Slavic autocracy and Western democracy.’

  ‘A difficult task?’

  ‘Almost impossible, as our history attests, but it has not stopped us trying!’

  Thousands of anti-austerity protestors take to the streets of St Petersburg and Moscow, clashing with Omon units on the Lomonsov bridge over the Neva and the Great Moskvoretsky Bridge, in full view of St Basil’s Cathedral;

  Russian National Unity paramilitaries begin to organise in response to President Babel’s declaration that ‘fascist reactionaries will play no part in Russia’s multicultural future’;

  Several negro, gay, and trans people are found dead in the back streets of Moscow’s Vnukkovo district following an assault on a local schoolgirl;

  Citizens’ food distribution centres open up all over the country. Those in Tverskaya Ulitsa in Moscow, Bolshaia Pokrovskaia in Nizhny Novgorod, and the Kalininsky District of St Petersburg are immediately surrounded and shut down by armed militia operating under direct orders from the Kremlin;

  Alexei Navalny and his brother Oleg, both with a string of convictions for defrauding the French cosmetic company Yves Rocher, distance themselves from earlier statements made during interviews with Russia Today where they had reminded people of their activism in the ‘Stop Feeding the Caucasus’ campaign, and described dark-skinned Caucasian immigrants as cockroaches. ‘Cockroaches can be killed with a slipper; as for humans, I recommend a pistol’;

  Yulia Navalny is interviewed about her fears for her husband, a man identified as one of the top hundred most influential thinkers by Time Magazine back in 2012. ‘He is under threat from Nazis!’ she claimed;

  A mayor of a small provincial town is arrested for quoting Bulgakov in reference to vnenarodnost, the alien character of the intelligentsia, along with cryptic allusions as to who was responsible for the mass famine of 1921;

  ‘For God’s sake’, demands a historian accused of writing anti-Semitic articles, ‘even Putin openly stated that 85 percent of the Bolshevik leaders were Jews’;

  Utro Rossii (Dawn of Russia) patriots begin talking openly about Novus Ordo Seclorum, the total population manipulation and resource extraction enacted by a One World Government masked under talk of Liberty and Equality.

  ‘Essentially, Russia has historically had three options. Slow absorption into Europe, as Krizhanich or Golitsyn wanted. Isolationism, as preached by Ioakhim. Or forced modernisation, like Peter the Great and Stalin tried. But in more recent times there was the relatively large and often overlooked anti-Marxist and pro-Christian underground that was dedicated to overthrowing the Communist state. This was something my grandparents and parents participated in. Their programme included statements like, “The life and dignity of the person are inviolable; all citizens are equal before the law; the freedom of labour is provided for everyone by the right of each citizen to land and to credit; all methods of dissemination of thought are free; gatherings and demonstrations are free and the secret political police must be disbanded”.’

  ‘Sounds very reasonable.’

  ‘Their plan was to start a military coup and establish a theocratic state!’

  ‘I get nervous when people bring God into politics!’

  Iryna nodded. ‘But God can be a radical force. St Michael the Archangel said, “Towards the unholy hearts who seek entrance into the most Holy House of the Lord with no mercy I point my sword”.’

  ‘And who in your opinion are the Unholy?’

  ‘Christ was sent to the world and not to the Jewish people alone. What was the first thing the Bolsheviks attacked? Tradition in the form of religion. In the Kremlin alone they destroyed the Church of Our Saviour near the Terem Palaces, the Church of Konstantin and Elena, the Church of Annunciation in the Rye Yard, then the two chapels at the Spassky Gates and the Church of the Nativity of John the Baptist. You are no doubt familiar with Filofei’s theory, “Dva Rima padosha, a tretii, a chetvertom ne byti”?’

  ‘That two Romes have fallen, Moscow is third and a fourth will never be!’

  ‘The Bishop’s Council that met in Moscow in 2013 declared, “Orthodoxy is being reborn as the foundation of national self-consciousness, uniting all the healthy forces in society—those forces which strive for the transformation of life on the basis of a sure foundation and the spiritual and moral values that have entered the flesh and blood of our peoples”.’

  ‘But still, so much for prophets, I say.’

  ‘Indeed, but we need a strong Orthodox Church now. Otherwise the Muslims will overrun us. In Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, there is a line predicting our regenerative qualities: “A star shall rise in the east”.’

  ‘God aside, your writers are seers!’ he complimented her.

  ‘Not all. Lev Tolstoy participated in the destruction of the national faith.’

  ‘And for Dostoevsky, “A people without nationality is like a man without a personality”.’

  ‘It is true, Dostoevsky became highly conservative in his later years. He believed Russia carried a divine candle to light the darkness of this world.’

  ‘And are those beliefs still prevalent?’

  ‘Among some on the nationalist Right, yes!’

  ‘Such messianic fervour can lead to madness!’

  ‘To have no sense of mission is worse. Of course there are many who are simply touched by the aesthetic of what Leontiev calls “the beards, pussy-willows, icons, poetry of prayer and fasting”. But thinkers like Theodosius of the Caves and Kirill of the White Lake thought nationality a holy ideal. Berdyaev suggests that through faith we could stop “the exploitation of man by man, as well as the exploitation of man by the state”, which for him was the way our economic elites converted man into an object. Solzhenitsyn was the same.’ Iryna stopped to quote him. ‘“I think Russia, which has thrown open the gates of Hell in the world, is alone capable of trying to close them . . . there are in the West no hands of such strength and no heart of
such wisdom . . . either the world will soon perish or the hands to defeat hell will come from the enslaved East”.’

  ‘And Tolstoy said, everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.’

  ‘Touché!’

  OPEC reduces the cost of a barrel of oil to $28;

  The Federal Bank’s life-long President, Janet Yellen, raises US interest rates for the third quarter in succession on advice from consultants operating out of Tel Aviv;

  Otkritie Bank officials close foreign exchange counters after a 300 percent increase in demand for Euros;

  Fighting is reported outside a branch of Sberbank opposite Kursky station in Central Moscow when people are turned away by private security guards;

  Russia reassesses its GDP forecasts downwards by 23 percent over the previous quarter;

  Rosneft, the state-owned oil company, is declared bankrupt, having failed to service the substantial foreign debt it incurred in order to buy out TNK-BP;

  Superstitious belief is reinvigorated by unexplained thunderclaps across the skies of western Russia;

  Talk of EU and American stealth weapons becomes common.

  He walked alone, a mere speck striding across the panorama of Palace Square. In front, the washed-out walls of the General Staff building were crumbling like marzipan in mercury drizzle. The green-and-white confection of the Winter Palace provided a backdrop to the scene.

  Tom recalled Iryna’s parting rendition of Pushkin’s dramatic lines from ‘The Bronze Horseman’:

  The river fell back in rage and tumult

  flooded the islands

  grew fiercer and fiercer

  reared up and roared

  like a cauldron, boiled, breathed steam

  and, frenzied, fell at last upon the town . . .

  How different it was today, he thought. Sour rain, like yellow dribble from a cretin’s drooling mouth, was falling. There was no cataclysmic flood like in 1824. It was so-postmodern, so insipid, so T S Eliot:

  This is the way the world ends

  This is way the world ends

  This is the way world ends

  Not with a bang but a whimper.

  He stopped on the flat expanse, a solitary figure in a land of granite. A rusty van pulled up, its driver getting out, scurrying to an open doorway at the base of a wall that stretched away into a silk screen of fog and mist. Cranky hinges pierced the air as the door slammed. Young soldiers walked aimlessly back and forth, new recruits in ill-fitting greatcoats and circular hats, lighting cigarettes, laughing and swapping stories. They were at a loss for something to do. They eyed girls and hassled tourists as their only self-indulgence.

  Tom felt like he was in the middle of an opera. From the Imperial Tsars to the insatiable Stalin, this square had been at the centre of Russia’s political theatre. It was the very stage upon which the Revolution had opened, the epicentre of long-mourned tragedies, the consequences of which were still carved into the gaunt features passed down from generation to generation.

  He was like a chess piece in some Grand Master’s last game, sensing his own decline, but also bearing witness to the debris of the moral and physical decay around him. He was thinking that all things come to an end. Empires and individuals alike experience the highs and lows of Spengler’s lifecycle. All bloom, all die, and gradually fade into dust. How would this end, he asked himself, in fire or flood?

  The Europe-Asia bridge over the Ural River in Orenburg is the scene for a symbolic welcoming by President Babel, opening Russia up to the peoples of the East. He simultaneously announces the expansion of Orenburg’s Tsentralny Airport to increase its capacity to meet the waves of migration from the south;

  Humanitarian agencies warn of the need to provide even more food and clothing for the mass exodus of people through Manzhouli in China’s Xinjiang province into Zabaykalsky Krai;

  Standardised railway gauges are retro-fitted to speed up migrant transportation, funded jointly by the World Bank and Beijing;

  Frustrated with the Duma’s inaction, nationalist vigilante groups launch Operation Optor (Repulse), a range of civil defence actions in Chelyabinsk, Orenburg, and Yekaterinburg.

  Tom eyed a couple walking along the Gorokhovaya. The man was wearing a black leather jacket; his partner, a long fur coat. He wondered about their lives. Where did they live and work, and did they have enough money to get by? He realised that superficial outward signs were no indicator of real material wealth. Perfumes could be black-market, fashions could be replicated. There was an entire subculture working away under the surface, behind the shop fronts, in the back alleys around the city. Nevsky may have once showcased only the finest imported clothes, silverware, and furniture but the underground economy had still thrived in the shadows, because here appearance was all. Like everywhere else, image, perception, and the opulent display of wealth, once flaunted tastelessly in long stretch limos driving around the city centre, was expected; indeed, insisted upon. Nobody was exempt. Crass consumerism was a disease regardless of the recession. The little Sashas and Ludas were disgorged at birth into this pantomime of posturing. They had grown up surrounded by the notion of self-worth being measured by your paycheque and the idea that anything could be bought and sold. Everything was up for sale and everyone had a price. Blat, low level corruption, was everywhere and always would be.

  Strolling through beating rain, moving on beyond the square, the tall buildings began to corral him. Damp, brown, brick faces were pressing in, looming large, almost threatening after the wide-open atmosphere of Dvortsovaya Ploschad. To his left, the busy Nevsky disgorged itself into the muddy Neva. Locals and tourists were making for cover. To his right, the gravel gardens of the Admiralty stretched in a diarrhoea quagmire along the roadside. Raindrops were drilling gullies in the pathways, the wind whistling along the stone-ridged embankment. Tom wrapped his overcoat more tightly around himself and crossed the road in the face of oncoming traffic, seeking the shelter of the trees.

  Teenage couples perched like love-birds on wooden benches, held hands, and talked furtively under the canopy of leaves. Their Goth-style makeup turned nervously towards him as he came along the path. Their pale, parasitical expressions eyed him suspiciously through dreary half-light. He noticed their conversations ceased as he approached, resuming as he passed, as if he represented the adult world they had come here to escape. Perhaps they thought he was a plainclothes policeman? He could see and smell the blue cigarette smoke drifting in the moist air. Behind him, the sound of a radio blared from wet undergrowth. He glanced over his shoulder. Above, the Admiralty’s golden needle struck like a knife through the heart of a heavy black cloud, its baroque radiance dissipating in the hail. Uniformed militia guards took shelter under arched stone. A mother and her elfin daughter, wrestling with an umbrella, followed in his wake.

  Two young girls were urging each other on, summoning up the courage to approach him. One held out a small, golden tin with red Cyrillic lettering on the lid.

  ‘Would you like to buy best Russian caviar?’ Tom looked at the object being thrust towards him. ‘It is the very best in Russia’, they continued, ‘would you like to try?’ They popped the top to reveal two small lumps wrapped in cellophane.

  ‘What is it, Turkish delight?’ he quipped.

  ‘Call it what you like’, one girl giggled. ‘It is three hundred roubles . . . ’

  ‘I don’t think so.’ He went to walk on, but they stepped in front of him.

  ‘This is a good deal.’

  ‘I am sure it is, but I’m not interested, thank you.’ Out of the corner of his eye, the Englishman caught sight of an older man, thick-set in tight leather jacket, his angry, boiled head emerging from the bushes. He shouted something to the girls and they tried to grab the Professor’s sleeve. Tom pulled away, a runic cufflink tinkling to the ground. He moved quickly towards the main road at the rear of the Cathedral. The light was better there and commuters stood en masse waiting for trams. Behind him he cou
ld hear the pimp cursing, but no one paid him any mind.

  The heroin and cocaine trade is estimated to be worth 2.7 trillion roubles a year;

  Synthetic marijuana, known as ‘spice’, kills 2,000 people a month;

  Disciples of Vladimir Zhirinovsky assemble a coalition from across the United Russia, A Just Russia, and Yabloko political parties, standing shoulder to shoulder under the great glass cupola, looking towards the Alexander Gardens in Moscow. Their speeches highlight the impending final battle between Christianity and Islam, symbolically represented by the looming statue of St George and the Dragon, close by;

  The city of Gudermes holds its second Islamic Caliphate Council which decrees that the gazavat, holy war, demands the execution of all Christian soldiers held in the prisoner of war camps around Samashki;

  Heavy shelling is reported in Duba-Yurt, where a small number of Russian troops, being supplied by air, continues to hold out against overwhelming odds;

  Satellite images identify thousands of Mohammedan fighters assembling in Ulus-Ket in the southern lowlands of Chechnya.

  The phone was ringing off the hook. Grigori’s number was flashing red on the digital panel. He threw off his coat, deciding to call back later and risk irritating his host. The place had been cleaned while he was out. He could only guess what the chambermaid had made of all the condoms stuck to the sheets.

  When he did reluctantly listen to the messaging service, Grigori’s monotone filled him with dread. It seemed his Russian colleague was on his way over. He would not take no for an answer. It was vital they spoke about security. Tom rolled over on the bedcover. There was something ominous in every syllable Grigori uttered. By the time the Professor had loosened his shirt collar and rinsed his face, the doorbell was already sounding.