Fascism and Bolshevism Reactions to Liberalism rather than to East Other, Skobov Says

Paul Goble

            Staunton, October 26 – A major source of ideological confusion in Russia today is that fascism and especially its most extreme variant Nazism is viewed as a response to Bolshevism rather that both fascism and Bolshevism were in fact reactions to what their leaders viewed as “the crisis of liberal capitalism in the first half of the 20^th century, Aleksandr Skobov says.

            “Liberal capitalist civilization went through a most serious crisis which many took to be not growing pains but its final agony,” the Moscow commentator says. And many both began to talk about “the decline of the West” and search for an alternative to the order they believed was on the way out (kasparov.ru/material.php?id=5DB435503D180).

                Just like now, he continues.  Then, “two main projects” were suggested, one on the left, “the Bolshevik project of ‘a communist revolution,’” and one on the right, “the fascist project of ‘a conservative revolution.” It was between these two competing projects, Skobov says, that “the main battle of the 1920s and 1930s” occurred.

            Because the two were engaged in a fight with each other, “about liberalism, hared to which and the denial oof the basic principles of which in fact united these mirror-like competitors, they forgot.” They viewed it as “an insignificant phenomenon on its way out” that could be ignored.  That in fact saved liberalism, Skobov says.

            Again, perhaps, just like now.