Quisling and us

“Russia and Ourselves” is a book by Norwegian fascist Vidkun Quisling, published in 1931. Quisling achieved ever-lasting notoriety and infamy during World War II, when he and his political party NS collaborated with the Nazi occupiers of Norway. This modern edition of Quisling's book was published in 1994 by “Sons of Liberty Books”, presumably an American neo-Nazi outfit, since it contains photos of Quisling meeting Hitler, and a glowing pro-Nazi introduction by one James K Warner. The editor has also inserted a bizarre comment into Quisling's text, charging that Kerensky was Jewish! The rest of “Russia and Ourselves” seems to be Quisling's unamended original, however.

The racist and fascist influences are already clearly visible in this early work by the future Norwegian Führer. Quisling calls for corporatism, a mixed economy with government intervention, expresses interest in Italian Fascism and German National Socialism, and calls for a Nordic-led European alliance centred on Scandinavia and Germany. One of his main objections to the Russian revolution is that the Bolsheviks exterminated the hereditary elite, and thereby destroyed the Russian racial stock, the best parts of which Quisling believes were Nordic. Instead, Russia has been taken over by “brachycephalic” Asiatic and mongrel breeds. And, surprise, by Jews! Quisling (naturally) hopes that the Bolsheviks will be overthrown and replaced by “Soviets without Communists”, while explicitly saying that a new, anti-Bolshevik dictatorship is necessary during a transitional period. This is similar to the secret program of General Wrangel's White Guard organization. Otherwise, Quisling sounds surprisingly moderate, calling for a mixed economy in Russia, opposing the re-establishment of landlordism, and promising each nationality in the Soviet Union extended freedoms and autonomy. He hopes that a non-Bolshevik Russia will join Europe, so that Russians and West Europeans can jointly expand in Asia…

Quisling's musings about the character of Bolshevism emphasizes its dual nature, both a radical movement for “World Revolution” and an imperial movement to re-conquer all the lands lost by the Russian Empire in the aftermath of World War I. He believes that the latter aspect will eventually become the dominant one, pointing out that Trotsky's call for world revolution was replaced by Stalin's “socialism in one country”. Quisling also compares Bolshevism with Christianity and, above all, with early Islam. Bolshevism is really a kind of “religion”, with a personality cult of The Prophet Lenin and Messianic aspirations. Of course, the Norwegian fascist leader regards Bolshevism or Communism as evil. As for the Jews, Quisling regards Marxism as Jewish, and believes that Jews are grossly overrepresented in the ranks of the Communist Party, feeding the traditional anti-Semitism of the Russians. He does regard it as interesting that the main Jews were purged by Stalin (presumably a reference to Trotsky, Zinoviev and Kamenev).

Most of “Russia and Ourselves” is a regular, “objective” analysis of conditions in the Soviet Union, plus a few chapters on Soviet foreign policy. Quisling had spent almost a decade in the Soviet Union as a diplomat and organizer of relief work (sic), and it's obvious that he knows what he's talking about once he gets down to the realm of brute facts. Even the finer points of Bolshevik policy are discussed, such as korenizatsiia, Bolshevik quasi-preferences for Islam over Christianity, the movement of worker-poets and worker-painters, the various phases of collectivization, the orientation to China and India after the failure of the German revolution, etc. Even his analysis of the causes of the Russian revolution are largely correct – Quisling doesn't deny that the plight of the Russian peasants and non-Russian nationalities was a dire one, and that Kerensky's failure to mend the problems led a large portion of the population to side with the Bolsheviks in November 1917. Indeed, he seems to have a certain sympathy for the Russian peasantry, and even claims that it contains Nordic types! Occasionally, however, he makes somewhat curious statements, such as referring to the Russian Orthodox Church as “the Greek Catholic Church”, or arguing that Ukrainians and Byelorussians are really Russians. The latter argument is particularly intriguing, since Quisling's wife Maria was Ukrainian.

Quisling doesn't believe that the Bolsheviks have widespread popular support, except in the younger generation of workers, but he is sufficiently realistic not to predict the imminent downfall of the Communist government. Nor does he call for a foreign intervention. Rather, Quisling pins his hopes on factional splits in the Communist Party, hoping that the Right Opposition (Bukharin's supporters) might gain the upper hand against Stalin. The centrifugal tendencies of the non-Russian nationalities might also weaken the Soviet Union, but this is balanced by the fact that “Russians” (actually Ukrainians and Byelorussians) in Poland and other border states might side with the Soviets against the West. (There seems to have been a certain truth in both propositions.) Quisling discusses Bolshevik attempts to fight the British Empire by appeals to Indians, Chinese and Muslims, but believes that these are unlikely to succeed, since the so-called Congress of the Peoples of the East (organized by the Communist International in Baku in 1920) also called for class struggle against the local Indian, Chinese and Muslim elites, making them less prone to collaborate with the Soviets. Once again, there seems to have been some truth in both propositions. For some reason, the author doesn't explicitly discuss the rift between Communists and Nationalists in China, but this is presumably one of the developments he had in mind.

Quisling fears the Bolshevization of the Nordic countries, Finland in particular, but also his native Norway, since the Norwegian Labour Party at this time still had a “revolutionary” program. It's somewhat ironic that the subsequent pragmatic compromise between Labour and the right-wing Agrarians was struck to stop *him*, while also making a socialist revolution less likely.

Otherwise, “Russia and Ourselves” is very much a period piece, being written before Hitler's rise to power in Germany, and also before Stalin's successful industrialization of the Soviet Union. Quisling seems unaware of the massive American assistance to Stalin's regime. Obviously, he couldn't know that Stalin would soon “solve” the nationality problem by Russification, thereby placing a lid on the centrifugal tendencies in the Soviet polity. These developments upset many of the author's geopolitical applecarts. In Quisling's book, Weimar Germany is still a Soviet “ally” of sorts, making him propose a closer collaboration between Norway and Britain!

We all know what happened next, don't we?

I'm not sure how to rate a book written by one of the world's most notorious traitors, but in the end, I give it four stars due to its intrinsic interest for students of history, both Russian and Norwegian.