¹ 3, 2013
The third article in the series Image of Russia and Formation of Political Worldview of Young Joseph Goebbels analyzes the last (1924–1925) stages of the future Nazi Minister's Russophile views evolution. The paper shows that Goebbels continued to view Russia as a “natural ally” of Germany even after he stopped studying literature and turned to political activity. The diary and early journalist publications of the novice Nazi suggest that Lenin's Russia preserved its attractiveness for him primarily because it continued to act as the same antipode to the liberal West as Dostoevsky's Russia used to be earlier. However, now Goebbels' hopes were no longer tied to the literary myth of the “holy country” carrying the religious and moral expurgation to the world, but to the practice of the Bolshevik “state socialism”. Explaining Goebbels' sudden turn to the anti-Soviet positions at the beginning of 1926, S.Allenov notes that the disagreements on the “Russian” question were the last obstacle in the way of his final rapprochement with Hitler, and his kind attitude towards Russia was the price he paid for the right of entry into the top of the NSDAP.
¹ 2, 2013
The article discusses the development of Goebbels’ Russophile views emerged from his fascination with the Russian literature, especially the works by F.Dostoevsky. Relying on the diaries of the future Nazi propaganda chief, S.Allenov traces the transformation of Goebbels’ ideas borrowed from the religious and ethical preach of Dostoevsky's “Christian socialism” into the political ideology of national socialism demonstrating the pattern of similarity between the system of masses manipulation constructed by Goebbels thereafter with the utopias that were well-known to him, i.e. Shigalevschina and the Grand Inquisitor’s Kingdom. According to the author’s conclusion, the young Goebbels’ initial hatred for the liberal West facilitated not only his perception of Russia’s image borrowed from the literature as an antipode of the “demising” Europe, but also his comprehension in the Germanized form of the Russian myth about the spiritually revived people that is soldered together by the bonds of the highest order and destined for the world leadership.
¹ 3, 2012
ABOUT A.A.GALKIN’S BOOK GERMAN FASCISM AND ITS EPOCH
The article is devoted to the contribution by Alexander Abramovich Galkin into the studies on fascism and foremost to the analysis of his fundamental monograph about the German type of this phenomenon. Demonstrating the continuity of the best traditions of the Marxist school of thought within Galkin’s works, S.Allenov also emphasizes their innovative character that allowed broadening in many ways the strict frames of fascism “class” interpretation that dominated the Soviet social science. Tracing the evolution of the researcher’s views Allenov focuses the attention on the gradual deepening of his thoughts on the relations between fascism and different strata of society as well as the role of the economic elite in setting and implementing fascist prevalence. The article convincingly shows that a lot of observations and conclusions made by the coryphaeus of the Soviet school of thought on fascism did not lose their scientific relevance, and the conception that they gave birth to is still one of the most successful attempts of the theoretical comprehension of this issue.
¹ 2, 2012
The article analyzes perceptions of Russia of that part of the German intellectual elite of the 1910s – beginning of the 1920-s whose beliefs combined radical German nationalism with the more or less brightly expressed Russophilism. The reasons for and the essence of such pro-Russian feelings are considered by the example of A.Moeller van den Bruck who significantly contributed to the consolidation within the German intellectual circles of the myth about the “Sacred Russia” as the religious commonality of the supreme order. Tracing the evolution of this image S.Allenov shows its permanent anti-Western nature. In all its guises Russia served for Moeller and like minded persons as a mere antipode of the liberal Europe that they loathe, and their plans about the German-Russian alliance in the framework of the peaceful “push eastward” were a reaction against the German fiasco in the West. Together with the motto “People without Space” these plans, although they possessed predominantly cultural-philosophical rationale, obtained sinister political meaning and pointed the direction of the far from peaceful German expansion.
¹ 1, 2012
The article is devoted to the formation of the Russophilic views of young J.Goebbels. Relying upon the early manuscripts of Goebbels that reflect the process of transforming him into the passionate adherent of L.N.Tolstoy and F.M.Dostoyevsky and shaping on this basis the idealized image of Russia, the author analyzes the influence of the Russian writers’ ideas on the development of the political worldview of a future Nazi. Qualifying his attempts to find in the religious-ethical quests of Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky answers to the acute problems of the German life as one of the manifestations of the cult of the Russian literature established in the postwar Germany, S.Allenov shows that under the conditions of disintegration of the German social consciousness the perception by young Goebbels of the preach made by the Russian God-seekers led to the radical perversion of its meaning that found its reflection in the early “socialist” views of the chief of Nazi propaganda. In these views he discerns that “heresy of utopism” with which the Russian philosopher L.S.Frank tiedany attempt of establishing the “God’s Absolute Truth on the Earth” that inevitably transforms “into the act of killing”.
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Allenov Sergey
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