The scene prompted double takes from Muscovites exiting the Sokol metro station. A few yards away, by the gateway of All Saints Russian Orthodox Church, waved the flag of pre-revolutionary Russia. Beneath the banner stood two young men in czarist military uniforms and two older men -- a grizzled Soviet army colonel in a karakul hat who proudly displayed an icon in a gilt- and-silver frame, and a gray-bearded orator who harangued curious bystanders over a megaphone. In a rambling tirade, the speaker called for the spiritual renewal of Russia, denouncing "Jewish Marxists" for masterminding the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, which destroyed "all that was sacred to the Russian people."
"Why are they doing this at the church?" asked an old woman on her way to Vespers.
"They should ship them off to work on a collective farm!" shouted another woman, clutching an empty shopping bag.
"I don't see anything wrong with displaying Russian symbols," countered a burly young man. "We have a right to our own traditions."
The nationalist upsurge in other parts of the Soviet Union has triggered a backlash in Russia, by far the largest and most populous of the country's republics. Tired of the slogan OCCUPIERS, GO HOME scrawled on walls from Vilnius to Baku, an increasingly vocal minority of ethnic Russians are demanding more respect and a better deal for their maligned republic. If anyone has suffered from 72 years of Communist rule, they say, it has been the Russians. They witnessed the desecration of their national shrines, the extermination of their brightest talents, and the economic and ecological rape of their resource-rich homeland -- all in the interest of forging a Soviet Empire where everyone else lives at their expense.
This new awareness has inspired campaigns to stop the ecological destruction of the Volga River and to rescue village churches, converted into everything from sports clubs to vodka-bottling plants during anti-religious campaigns of the past. The rich harmonies of Russian Orthodox liturgical music now sound in concert halls, and the long-banned works of religious philosophers like Vladimir Solovyov and Nicholas Berdyayev have been rediscovered. But amid this cultural renaissance, there are disquieting signs that bitterness over Russia's present woes is spawning intolerance of other ethnic groups.
Publishing in conservative journals like Nash Sovremennik (Our Contemporary) ; and Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard), ideologists for the Russian renewal movement rant against "Russophobia" and what they view as a deliberate campaign by the "ultra-left press" and "Zionists." They have called for an end to subsidies paid out of the national budget to other republics and for the creation of separate government agencies, public organizations and a television network to serve only Russia -- all of which the other 14 republics already enjoy. Valentin Rasputin, a nationalist writer known for his portrayals of Russian rural life, has even suggested that Russia consider seceding from the Soviet Union.