Rising Read online

  ‘Privet, Professor Hunter’, he shouted excitedly, leaping up from behind a low table, hugging the new arrival in two bear-like arms. Tom identified the smell of pirated French cologne and imported cigars. ‘Shto u vas jes t’vypit?’ The Englishman looked bemused, but before he could excuse his poor Russian, Grigori corrected himself. ‘Sorry’, he laughed with his trademark belly bawl, ‘What would you like to drink?’

  ‘Beer?’ Grigori ordered a Heineken. ‘That is good beer’, he promised with a wicked wink. ‘It’s brewed locally!’ More laughter.

  Turning his giant crocodile smile on the others, Grigori introduced Svetlana, a blonde, Germanic-looking girl with searching blue eyes and a voice like percolating coffee. She had been a research assistant to Alexander Dugin, former Head of the Sociology of International Relations Department at Moscow State University. It also transpired that she was a specialist in the political philosophy of Eurasianist thinkers like the linguist N S Trubetskoy, the geographer P N Savitsky, and G V Florovsky. Hunter took her hand respectfully. ‘And this is Dimitry, he is a freelance writer whose father was involved with Samizdat, Nash sovremennik, and Veche in the old days.’ Dimitry was an immaculately turned-out little man with a firm handshake and crisply lacquered white hair. ‘You may be familiar with his works on VSKHSON’s corporate state philosophy and the political doctrine of Danilevski, Struve, and Ilyin?’

  ‘I am delighted to meet you’, he said in broken English, ‘I am a great admirer of your work on Russian conservatism, and particularly your essay on Shafarevich’s Russophobia.’

  ‘The pleasure is all mine’, Tom replied. ‘I read your excellent thesis on Solonevich.’ Then, collecting his beer from the waiter, he reached out to Grigori’s third guest, Alexander, a publisher of Pan-Slavic and occult journals.

  ‘I think we have a mutual hero?’ Alexander suggested. ‘I know you admire Michael Freeman, who translated The Book of Vles.’

  ‘Small world, I just read Chivilikhin’s Pamyat!’

  ‘The world is getting smaller all the time’, Grigori said conspiratorially as they settled down to eat from a melange of enamel bowls. ‘Knife and fork, or chopsticks?’

  ‘Sticks’, Tom confirmed. ‘After all, when in Rome.’ This made the Russians laugh.

  ‘We use fingers’, Alexander chortled.

  ‘I have never been to Rome’, Dimitry grinned, ‘but I think they like sushi there too, no?’

  ‘It’s a world-wide phenomenon’, the Englishman confirmed. ‘Indian and Chinese cuisine is even more popular than roast beef and boiled potatoes in my country.’

  ‘Surely not better than fish and chips’, boomed Grigori, bragging loudly to all in earshot. ‘When I was in London I ate fish and chips in Trafalgar Square, right under Nelson’s column. It tasted marvellous, even better with all the pigeon shit!’

  Prominent French politician Said Be Hassi travels to Moscow to chair a meeting between Orthodox and Muslim faith groups;

  Russian military forces become increasingly ineffective, working out of a dwindling number of bases across the Ob;

  The land west of the Taz and east of the Tobol rivers becomes known as Ma wara al-nahr, the new Trans-oxiana;

  Vladivostok’s Oriental Institute is renamed for the Islamic scientist, Abu Nasr al-Muhammad al-Farabi;

  A great revival in the philosophical works of Abu Ali Ibn Sina, known to the West as Avicenna, sees copies of his books roll off newly-established Islamic printing presses in Kostroma and Tula;

  ‘The Soviet kolkhoze-haust, sometimes spoken of kindly as collectivisations of a hundred years ago, led to the genocide of a third of our people. They closed mosques and arrested our ulema. But it was the Kazakhs who made up Panfilov’s men who stopped the Germans tanks outside Moscow! It was Sultan Baimagambetov who saved Leningrad! Ghani Safiullin who won Stalingrad! And it was Rakhimzan Koshkarbayev who raised the Red Flag over the Reichstag. And now it will be the Oralmen’s army that that seizes Orenburg and Omsk for the Nurli Zhol’, said Maxat Sarinzhipov, the new Kazakh President, speaking from the Temple of Peace, a sixty-two-metre-high pyramid in Astana;

  Sarinzhipov, holder of the Kurmet Order, declares his country’s borders open between China, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Russia. ‘There should be no need for visas at Maikapchagai, Chongkapra, Kolzhat, Karkara, Aisha Bibi, Sypatai Batyr, and Khorgos. No barriers between brothers!’;

  Within months, the Kazakhstan Khanate announces that provocations by Rus separatists, disciples of Viktor Kazimirchuck in Kazakhstan’s border regions, has necessitated special forces seizing Kazakh-Russian border crossings at Roslavka, Taskala, Ust-Kamenogorsk, and Semipalatinsk. Justifying his country’s actions, Sarinzhipov said, ‘As a consequence of these security measures, we are guaranteeing safe passage of migrants from the east as part of our humanitarian mission’;

  In response to questions posed by the Russian authorities in Krasnoyarsk Krai, the President said, ‘Kazakhstan has long been a crossing point between east and west. What is different now?’;

  The Trans-Caucasian Federative model is abandoned in favour of independent tribal Caliphates;

  Within weeks, new laws are introduced expelling ethnic Russians, Germans, and others from their homes in Karaganda, Pavlodar, Akmola, and Kostanay;

  Plaques commemorating the Russian and Kazakh intellectuals Dostoevsky and Chokan Valikhanov are torn down in Petropavlovsk. Monuments to Pushkin are replaced by those of Abai Kunanbaev;

  Urban guerrillas fighting for Novarossiya in Oskemen are seized and executed at the foot of the Bayterek Tower in Astana;

  Latin inscriptions carved by Roman centurions in the first century AD, indicating Azerbaijan was the previous eastern frontier of Europe, are destroyed by acid attack.

  They talked through the evening. Each took turns raising the traditional toast of Russian intellectuals, ‘Let us drink to the success of our hopeless cause!’ Chopsticks danced, teeth gnashed on salad and seaweed garnish. Glycerine-brown trails of glutinous slug-blood dotted bowls of soy sauce.

  Replete, Grigori sat back, mountainous in his lugubrious joy. He was a committed member of several political groupings, including the Slavyansky Soyuz Nationalist Movement and the Izborsky Club. Clever like a fox, his eyes surveyed the body language of each of his little reception party and their unguarded personal interactions. Tom recognised how Grigori orchestrated the conversation, sometimes with a venomous appeal to base instincts, other times with deft poetic phrases. His lips jitterbugged with humorous anecdotes.

  ‘Listen’, Grigori said over brandy and coffee. ‘It is good we come together because this is a very serious business.’ They all shuffled expectantly in their seats. ‘The truth is we can no longer speak as freely as we once did. Babel is set to introduce laws to silence opposition. Our brother Egor Kholmogorov, editor of Russian Surveyor, famed for applauding the removal of the Yanukovych regime, was hospitalised after a mysterious altercation on the street. Soon we will be back to the days of Soviet soup kitchens and doors being kicked in during the night. Our influence is limited, and time is running out. These last elections were a pantomime. Dugin’s Eurasian Party could never hold together. We all know who is pulling the strings. Who is at the back of all this financial turmoil. It is the same people who manipulate the White House, the EU, and the UN. Our people need true leadership, not presidents and prime ministers who play musical chairs while NATO surrounds us with missiles and EU troops prepare to enter our near abroad. I mean, just look at Ukraine. Washington, Brussels, and Tel Aviv are the real enemy, not our Slavic brothers in Kiev. It is divide et impera by the same people who are selling Europe out to the Muslims of Pakistan and the dark hordes of northern Africa.’ Then, in an aside to Tom, he said, ‘Is that how you see it?’

  ‘Yes, a case of divide and conquer’, Tom affirmed. ‘Prime Minister Cameron even sent British military advisers there at the request of his rabbinical brothers.’

  Grigori continued, ‘The Third Rome is under siege. Not just from
the West but also from the East. What we need is a Moscow, Minsk, and Kiev axis unifying Slavs, not dividing them. Damn Astana’s steppe bandits and all of Eurasia, I say. We all know what is happening in the Caucasus. They are calling for the establishment of a Caliphate. Even as we sit here, the reformed Sassanid Army led by the Caliph Harum al-Rashid Division pushes on the Derbent Gates, the entry point into the Eurasian Steppe. Where did all these people come from? Have you been to Irkutsk recently?

  The Tbilisi Trade Accords: a delegation from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) composed of American, EU, Chinese, Islamic Federation, and Israeli representatives meet with the newly-elected Russian President following the collapse of the Eurasian Economic Community to agree to the division of Russia into four distinct economic trading areas: namely the Slavic, European Russia, lying in the Volga basin and linked to New York and Brussels; Caucasian Russia, between the Black and Caspian seas, linked to Istanbul and Baku; and the Ural and Siberian Russia, linked to Astana and Beijing;

  Ancient Lake Baikal, in eastern Siberia, the world’s largest freshwater resource, is claimed by China, which immediately begins draining its 23,000 cubic kilometres of water from Angara to supply the growing population of the Sino-Siberian hinterland;

  The Sino-Muslim Development Treaty bans Russian industrialists from the strategic Altai mountain range where the borders of Russia, China, Mongolia, and Kazakhstan intersect, apportioning the land at the headwaters of the Irtysh, Orb, and the Sayan down to the Gobi to the Altaic family of nations;

  Major industrialisation begins on the Uvs, Khyargas, Drogon, and Khar watercourses.

  ‘If we do not link up with the rest of the White world, Siberia will be lost forever. The government has abandoned the country. There are only seven million Russians now, compared to the hundred million in China’s most northeastern province. Our people have to defend themselves. The 18th Machine Gun Artillery Division was completely over-run in Irkutsk. I have witnessed the mass movement of six hundred thousand illegals through the border. And now the Islamic Uighur separatists of Xinjiang are committing suicide bombings in markets and stabbing people on railway platforms. It is a tidal wave of human material, I tell you, flooding along the Tunguska and the Kolyma. It is a new Mongol yoke that will make the time of Ghengis Khan’s yasa look like Christmas holidays.’ His audience became anxious. ‘You know, there is a story my uncle told me about a closed lecture he attended many years ago with a functionary of the Foreign Ministry. When someone in the audience answered that capitalist imperialism was still the greatest threat to socialism, he laughed contemptuously. It is China, he shouted. To postpone dealing with the Chinese problem is especially dangerous because time is on their side, and the longer we or the West waits, the more difficult this problem will become.’

  ‘And we have waited far too long’, Svetlana said. ‘Business agreements between Rosneft and Sinopec are worthless. The Chinese model is the destruction of any other national element. They plunder our land east of the Lena and strip the wood from the taigas, drain the water from Lake Balkhash and siphon oil from under the Tien Shan mountains. Gone are the days when Russian and Kazakh youth shared café tables in Almaty. Now they are split into ethnic gangs. Using mercantilism, the Chinese intend to restore their Qing dynasty in Mongolia while hoovering up the Gobi Desert’s minerals. Ulan Bator is owned by Beijing. There are military skirmishes from the Kyrgyz border to Vladivostok. We either cede land or face open hostility. They already outproduce us in manufacturing using their Laogai sweatshops, and commit genetic genocide against suppressed peoples such as the Tibetans by forced intermarriage.’

  ‘Yes, they are not just after the zinc, nickel, tin, and precious metals. Long-legged Siberian girls are already bearing sons with Chinese faces. We fooled ourselves that our own Turkic element would outgrow their infantile belief system. While we are divided amongst Neo-Slavophiles, Eurasianists, National Communists, and ethnic nationalists, they are united by their Noble Qur’an. Our heartland stretches from Moscow to the Urals, and then to the Transbaikal. But look at the foreign faces swamping our streets. Listen to the different languages children speak in our schools. Now there is a civil war just like in France, Italy, and those other countries!’ Dimitry sounded angry. ‘We need another victory like at Kulikovo.’ Grigori cheered indignantly.

  ‘Our government is full of appeasers, paralysed with fear’, said Alexander through cigarette smoke. ‘Under the Soviets there were over forty-five ethnic regions. By the time of the 1989 census, more than four hundred different ethnicities were within our borders.’

  ‘There were plenty of signs years ago. Remember the Nord-Ost siege? Who do you think blew up the Moscow to St Petersburg train line and Domodedovo airport?’ Grigori stuttered, spilling a mouthful of cognac. Tom shrugged his shoulders. ‘The same people who set off explosives on your underground?’

  ‘And Madrid and Charlie Hebdo!’ Svetlana insisted.

  ‘No, Paris might have been others’, Grigori hinted.

  ‘We never recovered from the marazm’, Dimitry muttered. ‘There are too many nostalgics for the Soviet empire.’

  ‘He means the Breznhev sterility’, Svetlana added for Tom’s benefit.

  ‘No, no!’ Grigori laughed. ‘Sterility means no sperm for babies. You mean senility.’ Then, tapping a finger against the side of his head, ‘No brain power!’

  ‘The same result’, she smiled back sarcastically over the rim of her coffee cup.

  ‘But since Putin’s 2006 natalist strategy of giving maternity money to families, your birth-rate is slowly stabilising’, Tom interjected, completely misunderstanding the point his co-conspirators were making. ‘In the UK our population growth is fuelled by Third World immigrants!’

  ‘Russian faces in strollers is good!’ Grigori confirmed. ‘The old President even enacted anti-homosexual laws and called abortion an abomination.’

  ‘Don’t give him too much credit, he was a power-hungry, self-interested politician, no different from the EU bureaucrats’, insisted Alexander.

  ‘But at least Putin declared that Russians have a unique and very powerful genetic code’, affirmed Dimitry.

  ‘Interesting that it was Khodorkovsky who challenged that’, Sveta said decisively.

  ‘And the very reason why he was the Soros Foundation’s Man of the Year for financing the Russian Liberty and Freedom Party’, Grigori belched.

  ‘Another bloodsucking flea, just like Boris Berezovsky. But at least that one had the decency to hang himself.’

  ‘Or was hung?’ Sveta propositioned.

  ‘It is all about money!’ Alexander raised a glass. ‘To Sergei Yevgenevich!’ Tom looked uncertain.

  ‘Former Chairman of the State Duma’, Grigori explained.

  ‘There was a book’, Dimitry said. ‘Another Life, published many years ago by the underground. My economics colleagues used to quote at me from it . . . “If nothing changes you and your children will continue to scurry around in shops, wear faded clothes, wait in line for an apartment for ten years . . .”’

  ‘I’ve never read it’, Sveta breathed, ‘but like Zhirinovsky said, the Americans are clever. They knew it is better to come here with chewing gum, stockings, and McDonald’s.’

  ‘I didn’t read it either’, blurted Dimitry, ‘but it is irrelevant now, Khodorkovsky’s book, Man with a Rouble, outsells it. Anyway, we should all be reading Dmitry Orlov’s Five Stages of Collapse or Dugin’s Mysteries of Eurasia and Foundations of Geopolitics, and writers like Aleseev.’

  ‘Dimitry is right. Naishul’s book has long passed its sell-by date’, Grigori insisted. ‘Alexei was a child when that book was circulating. Khodorkovsky’s is a celebration of embezzlement. At least Orlov was born in this city. Since then, mafia capitalists have been let loose by the shock-therapy economics of Gaidar, Fyodorov, and Chubais. Then, when the American ideas they used failed, we turned to Chernomyrdin and Gerashchenko’s liberal credit system. The World Bank e
stimated something like forty billion dollars was made on the back of sell-offs and acquisitions by racketeers between 1991 and 1994 alone. We had a choice back then, either to join those who exploit the world economically, or oppose them. This generation lives in a world where five years ago there were more billionaires in Moscow than New York. Have you seen Tverskaya Street recently? Once, there were better clothes there than on Rodeo Drive. Italian shoes and Swiss watches are not the answer. We need our spirit back.’ His hands moved in karate chops before his face. ‘We need passionarnost!’

  ‘Not so long ago we had all the gas’, said Sveta ironically. ‘Gazprom still holds reserves in Kazahkstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan.’

  ‘But for how long? It is the energy resources the Muslims are seeking to control’, countered Tom. ‘They will nationalise those assets and refuse to acknowledge Russian ownership. Will Beijing still honour your trade deals? The EU is just waiting until they can seize all the minerals in the north. The South Stream project was once going to supply 64 billion cubic metres of gas to Europe, but the price of energy is being manipulated.’

  ‘Tom is right’, Grigori said. ‘The Chinese are devious and cannot be trusted. There is also a powerful alien grip on the American mind. Our enemies still want to impose an encirclement, the Anaconda Thesis on us. The EU’s Ostpolitik is to talk of a new Iron Curtain because of Russian aggression in Donetsk, then pull that curtain down with a bang. Even one of our own parliamentarians, Vladimir Ryzhkov, said the EU is the most successful model in history. NATO troops are now in Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. They join with Wall Street to intervene in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan. They desire Georgia’s gold, copper, timber, and to choke the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan pipeline, investing billions on a euro-transport corridor through Turkey, via the Caspian, to China. For God’s sake, they overthrew the legal government of Serbia. Bombed our brothers in Belgrade. Installed Muslims in Bosnia. Look closely at events in Ukraine. The US National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, said, ‘Ukraine’s very existence as an independent country transforms Russia.’ The EU is in bed with oligarchs like Ihor Kolomoisky to raise volunteer battalions in Dnipropetrovsk. Jews like him and Arseniy Yatsenyuk are shouting about another Holocaust and how the Rabbis of the Golden Rose are leading the Chosen in yet another exodus to Mariupol. The American sanctions hurt us. The hand of Soros and the CIA are behind this? The USA has reappointed Victoria Nuland, Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, who wants to buy Ukraine on the cheap, offering a few billion. Before all this, Russia offered 15 billion, joint projects involving heavy industry and setting gas prices below the market value. I say, God bless those burnt to death in Odessa, the slaughtered innocents in Slovyansk, Zakharchenko, and the defenders of Donetsk! They shelled the shit out of Horlivka, then shot down the Malaysian airways MH17 in a false flag operation. Why do you think they want to dislodge our influence from the Carpathians and undermine us in Belarus with the Treaty of Nice and their offer of Eastern Partnership? Where do the pipelines run? Which tribe do the Americans and EU support, both here in our homeland and in Ukraine? We had no choice but to send troops into Crimea. People like Aleksander Muzychku were killed like dogs in the street. But we have to ask ourselves whose interests are really being served when people like us, people who share the same ancestry and same territory, shed each other’s blood?’