As I was looking through Russia expert Stephen F. Cohen’s new book, Soviet Fates and Lost Alternatives: From Stalinism to the New Cold War, I was quite tickled by a chapter title — “The Tragedy of Soviet Conservatism” — and the two epigraphs that follow it:
In the West, they respect people of conservative views.
YEGOR LIGACHEV, 1990
We are conservatives, and let us not be ashamed of the word.
IVAN POLOZKOV, RUSSIAN COMMUNIST LEADER, 1991
As to the first: It’s not quite that easy for us, pal! (To be fair, though, he was writing two decades before Al Franken gave the Democrats a supermajority.)
As to the second: Conservatives are notorious for their unending, borderline-obsessive discussion of what exactly the definition of conservatism is, but this quote illustrates that the definitional struggles are not entirely a waste of time. I’m sure Polozkov would get a very loud cheer at CPAC for that line quoted above; but I’m equally certain that the next few paragraphs of his speech would make him even less popular there than, say, John McCain.
(The transposition of domestic politics into the key of a totally different system is a fun exercise. When I was about six years old, Mad magazine — I think it was, I’m not sure — had a parody version of a Soviet TV Guide. One of the shows was Firing Squad, hosted by William F. Bucklov.)