ABSTRACT
This chapter offers a comparative overview of the fascist, semi-fascist, and near-fascist organizations. It focuses on the most significant features of their structure, activity, and ideology. Those who elaborate the ideologies of fascist organizations face several difficult and interrelated dilemmas. The national past is of vital importance to fascists as a source of inspiration. Many Russian fascists try to solve the problem by stressing the undoubted continuities that exist between one epoch and the next, such as the incorporation of certain pagan beliefs and attitudes into Orthodoxy and the traditionally Russian aspects of bolshevism. The most typical stance of Russian fascist organizations on the issue of national history is a somewhat ambivalent orientation toward the epoch of Orthodox autocracy. Moreover, the closeness of the historical association between Orthodoxy and autocracy threatens to deprive fascists of the flexibility they need to design and construct their new order.
