media concept Introduction to the book reprint

In 2015, the book "The Roots of Stalinist Bolshevism" was published. Today we can say that it has attracted attention in reader circles: the circulation has already exceeded the bar of ten thousand copies and continues to be reprinted. The interest shown is not accidental, since we are faced with an attempt to understand the turbulent vicissitudes of our past, based on the fault of the second half of the 17th century. Through the prism of that catastrophe, our history appears differently than in the polished works of Karamzin, elevated by Romanov propaganda to the rank of textbooks.

The conversation began on the consequences of those large-scale religious upheavals in the monograph "The Edge of the Russian Schism." Throughout the 18th-19th centuries, the social "energy" of these consequences was felt in latent (hidden) forms, which was categorically denied by the pre-revolutionary officialdom. The authorities and the church did their best to portray the unity of the people around the throne and the altar. Those who did not participate in this "good" action were dubbed outcasts, they were denied the right to be called Russians. After 1917, this whole "idyll" collapsed like a house of cards. The ease with which the “popular” monarchy sank into oblivion and the even more “popular” church crumbled is impressive even a century later.

The work "The Roots of Stalin's Bolshevism" provides answers to why this happened. The reasons are not in the intrigues of foreigners, not in the cunning of foreign forces, but in the peculiarities of the domestic historical process. The reality that came out of the crucible of the religious schism formed layers with diametrically opposed life principles - economic, cultural, spiritual. The conflict of the population, crushed by the state and the church, and the triumphant leaders always smoldered in the depths Russian society, and it was also painted religiously. The statistics prevented us from seeing this, according to which there were about two percent of the Old Believers in the country, which reliably covered up the true situation. The turning point occurred after 1917, generated by internal elite contradictions. This became a kind of detonator for the explosion that demolished the Russian empire and the church.

One of the important merits of the book can be considered the "warming up" of a wide interest in the Old Believers. For a long time it was generally not customary to talk about him: neither pre-revolutionary nor Soviet science indulged him with their attention. And even today a narrow circle of specialists who study mainly philological, religious, and local history aspects are engaged in it. It was necessary to raise this issue to a higher level. To show that, contrary to the established opinion, Old Belief is not an “ethnographic hollow” covered with cobwebs, but the main road of national history. True, it is cluttered with a variety of garbage, which is why we are all persistently offered “convenient” detours.

It is surprising that some, even trained people, the ideas of the book are met ambiguously. The relationship between the Old Believers and the Soviet project is taken literally by them. For some reason, it turned out to be quite difficult to understand that we are not talking about practicing Old Believers, but about people from this confessional community. In a new, already non-religious quality, this could not but leave an imprint on the ideas, mentality and behavior of people from the worker-peasant strata, which became the backbone of Soviet power. Without taking this circumstance into account, the meanings laid down in the book are not easy to grasp, if at all possible.

In addition, the disclosure of the Soviet project as a natural development of the national spirit irritates many. In this case, "many" - this is the foreign forces of various ranks, claiming power, or rather, the further ruin of our homeland. First of all, we are talking about the liberal public, grouped around well-known means mass media and several higher educational institutions. In this environment, burning hatred is caused by works where the name of Stalin is not slandered or the USSR is positively spoken about. The goal of the liberals is to push Russia into the global expanses, dissolving it in the crucible of transnational corporations that rule the world.

Church circles pour out no less malice. This is not surprising, since it is they who specialize in privatizing the image of true patriots. Highlighting the fact that this church was planted on our land from the western side and with obvious predatory goals, drives them into a stupor. From here, one step to the publication of the facts of mass genocide against the peoples of Russia, primarily the Russians, unleashed by the House of Romanov together with the Russian Orthodox Church, which monarchists and bishops are hysterically afraid of.

It must also be said about the campaign launched against the "Roots of Stalinist Bolshevism" by the current Trotskyists. Their leaders visibly felt a threat to their ideological positions. These "benefactors" of the left movement seek to gloss over the conflicts in the CPSU (b), which ended in the elimination of their "Trotskyist relatives." As before, the latter were hiding behind Lenin, and their modern followers are trying to hide behind Stalin, thereby tearing him away from Russian soil. The task of today's Trotskyists is unchanged: to pump up the left movement with injections of the same rabid globalism, using for this, unlike the liberals, "non-bourgeois" packaging and socialist rhetoric.

Thus, a stable anti-Russian front is outlined, consisting of liberals, churchmen, and Trotskyists. What they have in common is a foreign ancestry, the desire to use us for their ideologies that have nothing to do with the vital interests of indigenous people. These forces can only be resisted by relying on the "center of gravity" located in our land. Not Western imitations, not monarchist cries or Trotskyist frenzy, but the people, who for the first time in the world won the right to build life in accordance with their ideas - this is the axis around which Russia must be reborn. We hope this book will contribute to this cause.