By Eric Vandenbroeck and co-workers
Chaadayev's negative view of Russia, as shown in the previous
part of our investigation, in the end incited the formulation of a new outlook
asserting the superiority of Russia over the West. This was known as Slavophilia. At the start of this website we already had an
article mentioning Slavophilia in relationship to the Eurasia
movement, but will now will need
to come back to the former.
According to Walicki's Slavophile Controversy (121), one of its
influential figures was Ivan Kireevski, "the
founder of the Slavophile doctrine." Hence we will start this time by
taking a look at Kireevski's 1852 article
"On the Nature of European Culture and Its Relation to the Culture of
Russia," which according to Walicki was his
"clearest and most systematic exposition of Slavophile philosophy"
(135).
Here we notice, that
if Chaadayev situates himself as an intellectual who
cannot feel at home in his own country, then Kireevski
situates himself as an intellectual who can no longer feel at home in European
culture. He speaks of searching for a new philosophy, to find "complete
answers to those very questions of the mind and heart which most perturb a soul
disillusioned by the latest results of Western thinking" (207). Both
authors perceive that contemporary conditions frustrate their spiritual
yearnings, but their reasons for this are quite different.
Kireevski's depiction of the West agrees with that of Chaadayev in many details, yet the West is subject to an
opposite valuation. The West is Russia's counter-ideal, according to the
Slavophile, the opposite of everything Russia is and should be. Like Chaadaev, Kireevski means by the
West the essence of European thought and politics as they have unfolded
historically, but unlike Chaadaev, the West for him
is driven by a spirit of division rather than by universality and unity:
Western philosophies are based on dissolving logic, and Western social
relations are based on conflict. Russian culture, he argues, has been informed
by the spirit. of unity, even though this original national essence has been
hidden from national consciousness until recently. Now that it is revealed,
Russian intellectuals must make a choice between adherence to Western or
Russian values. The vital question of the day is "the relation of Russian
to Western culture." The answer to this question will
"determine" not only intellectual life but "the meaning of our
private lives, and the nature of our social relationships" (175).
Why does the question
of the relation of Russian to Western culture arise at this particular time?
Until now, Kireevski answers, it has been assumed
that there is only one way of being civilized, that Europe is more civilized
than Russia, and that Russia can catch up by imitating her. But, in the
mid-nineteenth century, the self-understandings of both "Western
European" and "European-Russian" cultures changed so much as to
make the previous conception of their relation impossible. ("Western
European" and "European-Russian" are terms he does not repeat,
using instead the West or Europe, on one side, and Russia, on the other. The
West and Europe - whose various nations "form a spiritual whole, into
which they all fit as limbs do into a body" [180] - are used as complete
synonyms. The opposite of Europe is Russia, and the opposite of the West is
either Russia or the East, meaning Greece, Byzantium and Eastern Orthodoxy.
There is no mention of Asia or the Orient in this text.) While Chaadayev compares Western and Russian civilizations, Kireevski compares Western and Russian cultures. For Chaadayev, civilization is based on thought: "Human
progress is advanced by a small number of philosophers who fonn
the "collective intelligence" of a nation ("Letter" 167).
As Russia unfortunately lacks her own tradition of collective intelligence, Chaadayev characterizes her "peculiar
civilization" by its deficiency. On the other hand, Kireevski
conceives of culture located "in the customs, manners, and ways of
thinking of the common people" (175), rather than the thinkers. Within the
ordinary ways of life, and the continuity of customs, the distinctive culture
of ancient Russia has been preserved, penneating
"the soul, the turn of mind, the whole inner content, so to say, of any
Russian who has not yet been transformed by Western education" (175). By
employing the tenn culture, therefore, Kireevski intends to describe the inner spirit of a group
as a whole, not simply the accomplishments of its leading figures.
Yet Kireevski is not as much a populist as this statement
implies. For him, the Russian people in their folkways have unknowingly
preserved the seeds of original Russian theology, and therefore they are the
guardians of the resources that intellectuals can use to reconstruct authentic
Russian culture. Thus, Kireevski' s conception of
what is important in culture, given its emphasis on theology, is not all that
different from Chaadayev's. Both authors privilege
religious principles, as articulated by the Church Fathers and eventually
spread to the rest of the community, as foundations for the spirit of a
civilization or culture.
Why does Kireevski believe that the cultures of both the West and
Russia changed so significantly in his time that a new awareness of their
distinctiveness and a new questioning of their relation was emerging? First,
the nature of Western culture has changed its nature insofar as it is nearing
its end. Although, admittedly, the intellectual culture of the West has been
dynamic and productive, it has no future. Its underlying principles have
reached their logical conclusion; they have achieved a "fullness of
development" (176), and they can unfold no further. This limitation of European
culture is becoming evident to Europeans themselves. Even at its highest point,
Western civilization has yielded nothing of substance to Westerners, but rather
has left them with a sense of "disconsolate emptiness" because they
have discovered its inner nature to be unsatisfyingly one-sided (177). The very
abundance of knowledge in the West has only revealed its inadequacy in relation
to "man's inner spirit," and the high levels of modern comfort and
convenience have only produced a life "drained of its essential
meaning." (So, while both Chaadayev and Kireevski describe the contemporary experience as one of
meaninglessness and emptiness, for the former, this characterizes the Russian
condition, and for the latter, the European.)
The spiritual deprivation
of the West is caused by the dominance of rationalism: "Cold analysis,
practiced over many centuries, has destroyed the very foundations of European
culture, so that the principles in which that culture was rooted, from which it
has grown, have become irrelevant, even alien to it, and in contradiction to
its end result" (177). In an argument that anticipates Nietzsche, Kireevski claims that Christianity in the West created the
tools of its own destruction. Medieval scholasticism laid the foundation for
the modem Western mind, characterized as a "self-propelling scalpel of
reason," "an abstract syllogism which recognizes only itself and
individual experience," an "autonomous intelligence" reduced to
a logical faculty which is "divorced from all man's other faculties of
cognition" save from mere sense-perception upon which "it erects its
ethereal dialectical edifices" (177). Until now, the implications of such
"destructive rationality" have not been evident to Western man, because
he has been proud of the power of his abstract reason, and of his triumph over
tradition. But reason is becoming conscious of its own limitations, as evident
in the thought ofHume, Kant, and Hegel. In
themselves, these philosophers are not responsible for the change of consciousness;
rather, they have Unwittingly registered history's self-consciousness.
"Europe's logical reason" is becoming conscious of its inability to
access "higher truths" and "living insights."
Now that Western man
"has lost his last faith," what is he to do? Either he can try to
find satisfaction in a lower mode of life involving sensual satisfaction and
economic calculation, or he can try to recover Europe's original Christian
belief-system. The problem is that the grounds of conviction have already been dissolved
by "the disintegrating action of abstract reason" (178). So Western
thinkers face a dilemma in which they at once distain a lower mode of
existence, and their reason will not allow them to accept the possibility of a
higher existence. They try to overcome this dilemma by creating a plethora of
individual philosophical systems, but all are delusional: "Like so many
Columbuses, they all embarked on voyages of discovery within their own minds,
seeking new Americas in vast oceans of impossible expectations, individual
assumptions, and strict syllogisms."
Kireevski argues that Russian culture in the nineteenth century
has changed so as to provide a way out of the spiritual impasses of the West.
As Russian thinkers realize the limitations of the of Western philosophy, they
can turn away from Western civilization altogether because an alternative is
available to them - namely, Russia's unique "cultural principles."
These principles, unrecognized by the West and, until recently, obscured at
home, persist in Russia in cultural "traces." They have not manifest
content like the principles of European culture, because, while Europe
underwent a continuous, and now complete, course of development, Russia's
history was interrupted by invasions. Now, this fragmentary past is becoming
available through historical research. The study of history fills out the
meaning of what had only been suggested by cultural remainders, and
demonstrates that the characterization of the Russian past as a void is
mistaken. The past reveals, for the first time, "the basic principles
which went into the making of the particular Russian style of life," and
"those vital faculties of the spirit for which Western intellectual
development found no place and to which it offered no nourishment" (180).
Early on, Russia had "spiritually broken away from Europe," and had
developed "an entirely different type of life, flowing from an entirely
different fountainhead." Thus, when in modem time the Russian tried to
adapt himself to Western civilization, he "had nearly to destroy his
national personality."
Like Chaadayev, Kireevski argues that
there is an essential difference between the West and Russia, and that this can
be explained by the origins of the two cultures. He specifically identifies
three "historical circumstances" which "gave the entire
development of culture in the West its specific character" (180). First,
Christianity developed in the West through the Roman Catholic Church. This is
also Chaadayev's View. But for Kireevski,
the Eastern Church is universal, because it participates in the Universal
Church, while the Roman Church is particular and corrupted by human passions.
When the Roman Church broke off from the Universal Church, it no longer saw its
particular contribution as part of a larger whole but as absolute. The second
historical circumstance is that Europe's ancient heritage was derived from
pagan Rome alone. The learning of Greek and Asian civilizations did not
influence it until the Renaissance. By that time, the habits of European
intellectual life were set. The third circumstance is that the history of all
European nations is a history of violent conflict, whether it be between
individuals or between groups.
These three
circumstances of the West's origins set the character of its subsequent
development. Roman civilization informed all structures of life in early
Europe. Thus, it was the source of that which is now distinctive about the
West. The Roman mentality, the origin of the "mentality of the West,"
can be characterized as the preference for form over inner meaning (183). This
is evident in Roman language, philosophy, art, religion, and law, all of which
were codified. Every Roman individual was connected to others only by
formal relationships and interest rather than by love or spontaneity.
Christianity initially worked against Roman pride and desire for dominance. But
when Rome left the Universal Church, its "spirit of domination" and
its excessive attachment to "abstract rationalism" went uncorrected
by other tendencies. The triumph of this one-sided rationalist theology,
destroying "harmony and wholeness," "helps to explain the
character of Western civilization" as a whole, including the later
emergence of Protestantism and modem atheism (185).
The history of the
West is one of struggle and violence. The Roman desire for power led the Roman
Church to work for papal domination over secular power, at the cost of
religion's purity and spirituality. Through the barbarian invasions,
politica1life became dominated by relentless struggles among groups and among
powers, and formal methods had to be discovered to keep the peace. And, because
''the development of a state is simply the unfolding of the essential
principles on which it is founded" (187), European history developed in
accordance with its violent origins, culminating in revolutions where the
overthrow of the existing order has become an end-in-itself. Now, Europe is
being undermined by the very violence that first created it.
Yet, Kireevski admits, European civilization at first advanced
rapidly. The separation of faculties, although it "was ultimately to
destroy the entire edifice of European medieval civilization," accelerated
development, according to the "law" by which "external
brilliance is coupled with inner darkness." The history of Islam also
shows how one sidedness can result in early advance, for its abstract religion
promoted civilization and science. But the limitation of Islam is shown in the
failure of Arab philosophy to influence Byzantine thought, despite its
Greek origins. It influenced Europe because it favored Aristotelian philosophy;
the latter became the basis of European scholasticism, a style of theology that
reduces truth to logical concepts. But "a spontaneous, integral approach
to man's inner spiritual life and a spontaneous, unbiased observation of the
world of nature were alike excluded from the charmed circle of Western
thought" (189).
The sterility of
scholasticism caused it to collapse once "the fresh, uncontaminated air of
Greek thought poured in from the East," when Byzantium fell to the Turks.
But even this could not change the basic habits of Western thinking. Descartes,
for example, thought he had thrown off scholasticism, but he merely continued
its obsession with logic in a new form (190).
Thus, the differences
in cultural origins have led to differences in the very mode of thinking in the
West of Europe and the East ofEastem Orthodoxy. The
separation and isolation of the faculties in Western thought created a cold and
unemotional reason, on one side, and unrestrained passions, on the other (193).
Even the moments of supposed inwardness in the Western tradition did not grasp
the true meaning of spiritual integration, which was the achievement of a
"living union" or "equilibrium" of the inner and outer life
(193). Because he did not aim for serenity, Western man has been
"eternally restless" (194). The whole "Western school" can
be characterized as one-sided in its mode of philosophy and in its effects
(191). And the one-sided obsession with analytical reason that has informed the
whole history of We stem thought has recently resulted in philosophy analyzing
the limits of analysis, and concluding that nothing can be known about reality.
So Western philosophy is now at an impasse; it is unable to continue along its
traditional road but has no new one in sight.
The Specific characteristics of Western historical development were
"entirely alien to old Russia" (182). While the West had a cultural
debt to Rome, Russia was indebted to Greece. While the Roman Church
abandoned the fullness of the Universal Church, the Greek Church remained
faithful. While Western theology was narrow, the Greek enjoyed the entire
heritage of the ancients and thus had "breadth and wholeness" (191).
Greek
Christian theology
was "profound, alive, elevating the mind from mechanical reasoning";
its goal has been the preservation of the purity of Christian doctrine rather
than the divisive desire for innovation. The Eastern Orthodox Church formed
"the authentic Russian mind, which is the foundation of the Russian style
of life," carried forwards especially by the monasteries. The monasteries
radiated "a uniform and harmonious light of faith": the Russian
people derived not only a distinctive spirituality from them, but also
"ethical, social, and legal concepts" which bore ''the stamp of
uniformity" (194). As a result, Russia has considered itself to be "a
single living organism" animated by common faith. Learning in early Russia
was quite advanced, far surpassing that of medieval Europe, and the profundity
of the Church Fathers continues to be "beyond the grasp of many a German
professor of philosophy (although none of them is likely to admit this
fact)" (195). Russian learning was so extensive, developed, and
"deeply rooted in Russian life" that it "has survived almost
without a change among the lower classes of the people," "almost
unconsciously, as a matter of tradition," despite the fact that the
intellectual class abandoned Russia for Europe (195).
Russia's political
history also took a different turn from Europe's. While the latter developed
through conflict, the former developed "independently and
naturally,"-"nurtured" by the Church (197). European
Christianity came to prevail only after a series of struggles, but Eastern
Christianity was adopted by Russians naturally, for Slavic customs favored its
acceptance and pure influence. Christianity then was able to form Russian
culture, because the nation was not deformed by violent conquest. Like Pagodin, Kireevsld argues that
the Normans were not conquerors but accepted rulers, and under them, Russian
society continued to develop -"calmly and naturally" (196). Those who
brought violence to Russia through invasion - the Tartars, Poles, Hungarians, Germans,"and other scourges" - never affected its
essential culture. They always remained alien, and, at most, arrested Russia's
development rather than changing its course (183).
(Kireevski
at one point speculates that they may even have served the Providential purpose
of ensuring that Russian culture did not become one-sided.) Throughout history,
the Russian Church kept itself pure, "like an unattainable, radiant
ideal" (196), and, unlike the Roman Church, never grasped for political
power. Russian religion influenced the nature of the community only indirectly
through its promotion of harmony and integration. Because all elements of
society were joined in common spirit, hierarchy was accepted as natural, not
leading to class conflict nor egalitarianism. Russian individuals lived in
"a natural, simple, and concordant relationship" with each other, and
so laws developed organically rather than externally and formally (197).
Moreover, because Russian society was governed by sanctity and unanimity, its
political life was governed by "conviction," ("it spontaneous
awareness of the sum total of social relations'') rather than
"opinion" (the "narrow selfishness" of a singular point of
view that opposes itself to others through argument [198]).
The nature of Russian
social institutions is therefore quite distinct from the Western ones."The entire edifice of the Western social
order" (199) is based on private land ownership as an unconditional right,
a notion which stems from Roman law. In Russian tradition, land ownership is
communal. The land belongs, in one sense, to the village community, to those
able to cultivate it. And in another sense, it belongs to the state, which was
owed service. "The general trend of Western civilization" towards
individuality has worked against strong family ties. Upper-class European women
put their social interests above their family involvement, finding their value
in "the brilliant salon," which is "the principal and engrossing
goal of their artificial life." The "marvelous and enchanting social
refinement" of aristocratic Western society is even corrupting the lower
classes, causing "moral degeneration." Western corruption will
inevitably result in the triumph of ''the notorious doctrine of the complete
emancipation of women" (202). In contrast, family life in Russia has
developed out of the values of "spiritual integrity" and heroic
sacrifice. The family has always reflected the needs of the ''unified
whole," not the goals of personal independence, ambition, opinion, or
fashion. While the characteristic Russian family is no longer so evident in the
Europeanized upper classes, it can be found still in the peasantry, whose
members work selflessly for the good of all. Each gives all he earns to the
head rather than benefiting himself, and no-one tries to usurp the head's
authority or call him to account (201).
While Europe was
besotted with striving and luxury, Russian life was informed by simplicity:
"Western man sought to relieve the burden of his internal shortcomings by
developing material wealth. The Russian endeavored to avoid.the
burden of material needs by raising his spirit above them" (202). Even
now, when the Western love of luxury has come to infect Russia, Russians
in general are not moved by economic motivations, and they do not aim to
maximize wealth. Regarding personal morality, the "Westemer"
is smug, always inventing new moralities to excuse his excesses, while the
Russian is aware that he is a sinner according to the light of the purity of
the original religion. Present "Russian customs" thus retain the
traces of ''pure Christian principles" which "the Slavic tribes"
so readily and easily accepted in early Russian history.
Given the centrality
of the principle of unity in Russian culture, any discord threatens the whole.
In the artificial West, there is always change because there are new opinions
which overcome old ones; but in a natural society, such as Russia, "every
change in direction is an illness, and is fraught with some danger."
Upheaval does not lead to improvement, but to dissolution - for change must
follow "the law of the natural growth of unified organisms" and thus
society "can only develop harmoniously and imperceptibly" (199). In Kireevski's account is no positive valuation of critique in
itself, for critique destroys unity. This confirms Raeff's
characterization of the Slavophiles: they were "interested primarily in
the organic totality of a social or cultural entity" and "recoiled
from everything that would lead to the dissection and destruction of its
integrity - in particular, logical analysis, individual particularism, the
atomization of society" (174). The only critique that Kireevski
offers of "Russian man" is that he is too intense, so that, in his
"constant striving for the unity of all moral faculties," he exhausts
himself.
Western man, who
"fragments his life into separate aspirations," is able to work more
efficiently and thus he can accomplish more (200). The essence of the West is
therefore formality, fragmentation, conflict and restlessness, while the
essence of Russia is spontaneity, wholeness, hannony,
and serenity (204-5).
Given its manifest
superiority, "why, then, did not Russian culture develop more richly than
the European before Western learning was imported?" Why did Russia not
outstrip Europe and lead mankind intellectually? If all is part of the plan of
Providence, what was the purpose of this plan? Kireevski
speculates that the Russians held to so pure a Christianity, that they may have
mistaken their religious practices for the Christian life as such. This danger
was evident in the sixteenth century, when the Russian respect for tradition
was becoming attachment to its forms, not its inner spirit (206). The
distortions of Russian culture caused religious upheaval, and, as a result,
some turned to Europe as the solution.
Until the present,
the enlightenment of Russia has depended upon foreign materials, but now it
must be derived from the "pure stone" provided by the Church. This
will only happen when the intellectual class becomes convinced that Western
culture is one-sided and inadequate, and, desiring the whole truth, turns to
the "pure fountainhead" of Orthodox spirituality (207). Turning away
from ''the yoke of the logical systems" of the West to Eastern theology,
the intellectual will discover ''the depths of the special, living, integral
philosophy" of the Church; turning to history will show the material out
of which "a different culture may be evolved" (207). Russian learning
will subsequently be founded upon ''native principles," the arts can grow
from "native roots," and culture "will then proceed in a
different direction." Kireevski concludes by
emphasizing that the spirit of original Russia needs to be rediscovered, not
its older forms. Russians should not return to the dead past, but evolve according
to living principles. Despite the numerous arguments he advances to prove that
the West is essentially foreign to Russia, and that true Russian philosophy
will be "incomprehensible to the Western mind" (207),Kireevski seems not to envision a future in which the two
are completely isolated from each other. He claims that "after the recent
interpenetration of Russia and Europe," what happens in one will always
affect the other (180). In other words, the impact of the West on Russia cannot
be completely undone. He does not address the apparent contradiction between
these positions.
Nicholas Riyasanovsky and other commentators show the extent to
which the Slavophile denunciation of Western thought was dependent upon the
very categories of Western thought, particularly of German romanticism:
"The Slavophile criticism of the German philosophers has often been cited
as a proof of their independence from Western thinkers. .. In point of fact,
this criticism is itself one of the most striking illustrations of the romantic
origins of Slavophile ideology" ("Russia" 170). The criticism
that Hegel's philosophy expounded a one-sided rationalism, made by Kireevski and other Slavophiles, was identical to the
criticism "already leveled by Fichte against Kant, by Hegel against
Fichte, and by Schelling against Hegel," not to mention "by all
romantic philosophers against the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century"
(170). (An English example would be J.S. Mill's defense of Coleridge's Germanic
organic idealism against Bentham's atomistic utilitarianism.) While Hegel, in
particular, came to stand for the hyperrationalism of
Western thought, his influence on Slavophile thought was substantial (Walicki 12). This can be seen in Kireevski,
who criticizes Hegel, but whose argument employs a Hegelian-style theory of
stages of consciousness. Likewise, Kireevski' s
contrast between the holism and spontaneity of ancient Greece and the
one-sidedness of the West repeats Schiller's critique of modernity.
Thus, in the
Slavophile ideology, as expounded by Kireevski, we
see a process in which the romantic critique of Enlightenment reason becomes a
critique of Western reason, and the romantic ideals of "organic
society" and "comprehensive knowledge" are attributed to old
Russia (Riasanovsky "Russia"l72). Riasanovsky argues that "the Slavophile view of
society and history represented a Russian version of the romantic ideology of
the age"(174). I would argue that Russian romantic ideology also
introduced anti-Occidentalism, which conceives of a distinctive Western
civilization characterized by mechanical analytic reason in contrast with some
other civilization or culture that is authentic, spontaneous, and organic. Kireevski's view that Descartes, Kant, and Hegel epitomize
Western reason, or the West tout court, is familiar today. It is a standard
claim of contemporary theory. Through this identification, the tradition as a
whole, with all its divisions, is collapsed into a single essential moment: the
Enlightenment. Walicki demonstrates the close
correspondence of Kireevski's dichotomy between the
essence of the West and the essence of Russia, and Ferdinand Tonnies's dichotomy of Gesellschaft and Gemeinshaft,
or of formalist society and organic community. Through the latter categories,
German sociological thought came to distinguish modern societies as Western,
and all others that were pre-modern or traditional as non- Western. The
different stages of cultures became different cultures.
Despite its appeal to
Russian nationalism against Western influence, Kireevski's
work met much the same fate as Chaadayev's at the
hands of the censors - the journal in which this article appeared was closed, Kireevski was placed under surveillance, and he was
forbidden to publish anything without prior pennission
(Raeff 175). The government wanted to promote the
centrality of the Russian State and the institutional framework established by
Peter that had so increased Russia's power and influence. It was suspicious of Kireevski's appeal to the authority of theology and the
customs of the people, and of his criticisms of Peter's reforms. A censor wrote
about Kireevski that "in his apparently loyal
article he fails to do justice to the immortal services of the Great Russian
Reformer and his imperial heirs, who were untiring in their efforts to bring
Western civilization to their subjects and only by this means were able to
raise the power and glory of our Fatherland to their present splendor"
(qtd. in Walicki, Slavophile 147).
The essentially conservative
nature of Slavophilism, and its lack of interest in political reform, is
evident in Kireevski's emphasis on tradition and
spirituality. The argument that politics is a Western phenomenon, alien to the
Russian soul, was made explicit in a memorandum to the tsar in 1855 by
Konstantin Aksakov, who claimed that the Russian
people had no desire to participate in government. This was demonstrated
historically by their invitation of foreign nilers
such as the Normans to govern and rule over them, and by their disinclination
to revolt against the tsar. Westerners might consider the Russians slavish, but
they judge them by alien standards: "For Russia to fulfill her destiny,
she must follow her own ideas and requirements, and not the theories which are
alien to her"(233). The Russians want to retain "their internal
communa1life, their customs, their way of life - the peaceful life of the
spirit (234). In contrast, "the Western nations, having abandoned the
spiritual path, the path of religion, have been lured by vanity into striving
for power" (238-39). But in Russia, social harmony is the norm, as long as
"the people do not encroach upon the state" or the state the people
(242). Russia's problems began with Peter, who breached the traditional unity
of state and land, causing the state to dominate the land. The Russian
upper-classes were Westernizers, and had.only
contempt for Russia itself (243). It was these people who caused political
unrest, culminating in the Decembrist uprising. Russia is now full of social
conflict and class alienation. The government wrongly suppresses all freedom of
expression because it thinks that the people will revolt, but on their own the
Russian people have no political ambition. "As soon as the government
takes away the people's inner, communal freedom, it forces them to seek
external, political freedom" (245).
Like "Westemizer," the tenn
"Slavophile" was apparently coined by critics of that outlook. The
term attributes to this tendency a greater interest in the Slavs as a people
than in Russia as a nation. Yet it is clear that for the Russian Slavophiles,
Russia, in particular, was at issue. Kireevski speaks
of Slavs only briefly in "European Culture" his concern is for
"our present and future Orthodox Russia" (207). Another major figure,
Aleskei Stepanovich Khomiakov, likewise, in his essay "On Humboldt,"
written in 1849, focuses on "Holy Russia." Russian Slavophiles, like
the later Pan-Slavists, always maintained that Russia
should be the leader of the Slavs, much as the United States is the leader of
the free world - not surprisingly, non-Russians protested this, and wanted a
real federation of Slavic peoples.
Like Kireevski, Khomiakov's view of
Russia's contemporary situation is accompanied by a diagnosis of crisis in the West,
whose "underlying spiritual principles have withered" (211). Again,
the West is detennined though the Roman origins of
Roman Catholicism, yet he characterizes the essence of Rome differently
from Kireevski. It is seen to favor necessity and
unity over freedom. The other contributor to Europe, the German tribes, valued
liberty, but their historical impact was made through violence. The Protestant
Reformation was a reaction against one-sided unity, but it asserted empty, one
sided liberty. The spirit of Protestantism, freedom without content, came to
dominate Europe as a whole, leading to revolutions (213). Providence, or world
history, has led mankind to see the error of the European path, and to see that
only Orthodoxy can combine unity and freedom (215). Through the Church, Russia
can claim the East: "Orthodoxy is represented by the East, and mainly by
the Slavic countries, headed by our Russia" (215).
So Russia has a
world-historical mission or destiny. It will fulfill its destiny partly through
recovering its past. Early Russia was open to all thought because it sought the
universal. But the invasions and oppression by foreigners caused it to turn
inward and turn against anything outside. Eventually, in reaction to such
narrowness, an outlook Khomiakov calls "Whiggism" - the desire to transcend tradition - came
to dominate in Russia. Unlike Whiggism in England,
which was an authentic part of the nation's culture,Whiggism
in Russia was alien to its spirit and its exponents became anti-Russian,
rootless, negative, and enslaved to "the powerful intellectual movement of
the West."
Russian
intellectuals, inwardly divided between the Russian soul and Western knowledge,
could not think originally. But now world history has "irrevocably
condemned the one-sided spiritual principles which used to govern Western
thought" (218) and called forth Russia to ''take the lead in universal
enlightenment" (229), and so Russian thinkers will have to learn how to
appreciate Russian principles. Western-based thinking, for example, cannot see
the distinctive order and justice that belongs to the Russian village
community, the mir. Future legal reforms, if they are to be authentically
Russian, must be derived from the communal principles evident in Slavic
customs. In other writings, Khomiakov advocates
social justice, including the freeing of the serfs, bholds
that any reforms to the social order should be based on economic principles
other than Western competition, and legal forms other than Western law.
The opposition between
the West and the Slavs is more developed in his "Letter to a Foreign
Friend on the Eve of the Crimean War," precisely because he sees it as a
war of liberation of the Christian Slavs and Greeks against the "Turkish
yoke" (109), and against "the arbitrary cruelties of
Mohammedans" (111). Russia will fight out of Christian duty, because it
"is bound by ties of blood to the Slav peoples" and "it is bound
to the Greeks by the ties of faith" (in Kohn, Mind 108), but she is
opposed in this holy work by the perfidy of European Christians who uphold the
rights of the Ottoman Empire. Yet the very enmity of "the Western
powers" to Russia's Christian mission has beneficial consequences
unintended by the West - namely, it causes two great principles finally to
"enter the great light of history": Whatever happens, Providence has
marked out our time to become a decisive era in the destiny of the world. From
now on, two great principles are on the rise: The first is the Russian or
rather the Slav principle, the principle of the real fraternity of blood and
spirit. The second, which is much higher, is that of the [Orthodox] Church -
and it is only under its protecting wing that the first principle could
preserve itself in the midst of a world of trouble and discord, and only thanks
to divine might that it will pass from being almost an instinctive tendency of
one race alone to the dignity of a moral law guiding the future steps of
mankind.(111)
In his unfinished
Sketches of Universal History, Khomiakov interprets
world history as the opposition between two principles. The "Kushite"
principle of materiality and necessity was expressed in the worship of stone,
representing matter, and the serpent, representing desire. The
"Iranian" principle of freedom was associated with spirituality and
poetry. The Kushites originated in Ethiopia and are associated with Egypt, most
of Asia, and Rome. The Iranian spirit of freedom passed to the Jews, much of
the white race, and the Slavs especially (Billington
320; Riasanovsky 1972: 10). The Kushite cultures were
oriented to the external world. producing monumental architecture; the Iranians
were oriented inward. Khomiakov's divisions were
suggestive of some racial theories of the time. which held that Aryans were the
creative race and Africans were slaves of nature. but in his case. these
principles were not based in biology. Instead, each culture had its own history
of struggle between the two principles. The Germans, for example, were
originally Iranian. yet centuries of Roman Catholicism and Roman law made them
increasingly Kushite. culminating in the logical systems of German philosophies
which insisted on the necessity of history (Walicki.
Slavophile 216).
The Slavophiles thus
used the West as a counter-ideal through which to define the Russian soul, and
they accused their opponents of being Westernizers who hated themselves
and their nation. Chaadaev's letter certainly
offers grounds for such an accusation, but in general, the Westernizers were
Russian patriots who thought that the good of Russia could only be accomplished
by taking on the universal ideas that had found expression in European thought,
and by reforming Russian institutions in their light. While Chaadaev
was an exception, the Westernizers did not criticize the Russian spirit in
relation to the Western spirit, but only those Russian practices which were
oppressive and exploitative.They criticized
objectionable aspects of Russia by calling them Eastern, Oriental, or Tartar.
Chaadaev, who set the terms of the debate, was not a typical
Westernizer, for he was in many ways a Burkean
conservative rather than a true progressive. Belinsky was more typical and
widely influential. Like other Westernizers in the mid-nineteenth century, he
was in touch with European radical opinion. Prince Mirsky, in his 1926-27
History of Russian Literature, calls Belinsky "the true father of the
intelligentsia," "the embodiment of what remained its spirit for more
than two generations - of social idealism of the passion for improving the
world, of disrespect for all tradition, and of highly strung, disinterested
enthusiasm" (qtd. in Kohn, Mind 116-17). Belinsky, unlike Chaadaev, does not affirm the Europe of what would later be
called the Western tradition, but rather the
Europe of
Enlightenment and progress. He is as critical of Old Regime Europe as he is of
autocratic and Orthodox Russia.
Belinsky's famous
1847 "Letter to Gogol," written in protest against what he
interpreted as the novelist's turn away from social critique, became the
"credo of the progressive circles" (Kohn, Mind 118) even though it
could not be published in Russia and was only spread through illegal copies. In
this letter, Belinsky writes that "Russia sees her salvation not in
mysticism, not in asceticism, not in pietism, but in the achievements of
civilization, enlightenment, and humanitarianism" (254). Contra the
Slavophiles, the burning issues in Russia are not theological but humanitarian
ones. The persistence of serfdom, the use of corporal punishment, the poor
treatment of women, "Tatar censorship" (258), and other "Tatar
customs" (255), all show a lack of respect for human dignity. Belinsky
wrote in the early 1840s: "What care I for the existence of the universal
when individuality is suffering? What care 1 if genius on earth lives in heaven
when the crowd is wallowing in the dirt?" ("Reform"128) "I
am inflamed against all the principles which bind the will of men to a creed!
My God is negation! In history my heroes are the destroyers of the old -
Luther, Voltaire, the Encyclopedias, the TeITOrists,
Byron (Cain), and so on . . . I prefer the blasphemies of Voltaire to
acknowledging the authority of religion society, or anything or anybody!"
(130); "Woman will not be the slave of society and man . . . There will be
neither rich nor poor, neither kings nor subjects. There will only be brethren,
there will only be man" (131).
Despite the epithet
of "Westernizer," which suggests a desire to make Russia Western,
Belinsky is critical of Peter's reforms insofar as they caused the upper-classes
to divorce themselves from the Russian people and from Russian customs. Instead
of slaves imitating foreigners, he calls for "an enlightenment created by
our own efforts, cultivated on our own native soil" ("Russia"
121-22). But "for that we first need the education of a society that would
express the character of the great Russian people" (124). So learning from
the West is only a stage of immaturity until the point when Russians will
"be the rival and not the imitators of Europe" (125). "We
are today the pupils and no longer tzealots of
Europeanism; we want to be Russians in the European spirit"
("Miracle" 128).
While Belinsky looks
forward to the development of an independent national character, comparable
rather than equivalent to the West's, he describes those aspects of Russia that
are backwards and evil (encompassing most of Russia's history until Peter in
fact) as "Asiatic:' Russia is in "the East of Europe, where the two
parts of mankind meet" and it "differs sharply from its Western
neighbors" ("Russia" 119) because "Russia was cut off from
the West at the very beginning of her existence" ("Miracle"
126). Russia was formed by ''the sword of the Asiatic-Russ" and was given
religion by "moribund Byzantium" which taught her the custom of
"gouging the eyes of enemies" (126). It was united by "the
chains of the Tartar" and "the hand of the Khans" (119), which
taught it "slavery in notions and sentiments," "Asiatism in ways oflife;' and
"everything that was directly opposed to Europeanism" (126): "How
much there was that was Asiatic, barbaric?" Belinsky asks. Once under its
own rulers, Russians worshipped the Tsar "as Providence" (119),
almost as ifhe were an Oriental despot. In ajudgment utterly opposed to that of the Slavophiles,
Belinsky considers Russia's early life primitive and monotonous,
"one-sided and isolated" (120). Yet the barbarity of the Russian past
was not due so much to native characteristics, but "engrafted on us by the
Tartars" and thus can be overcome. In fact, once Peter opened "his
nation's door to the light of the world,"Russia
responded gratefully and began evolving into something new (127).
Thus, like Chaadaev, Belinsky understands the Slavophiles to believe
in the Orient, in "the victory of the East over the West" ("Slavophils" 133-34). He thinks that they are
wrong about Europe's decay, because they cannot understand the West and ''they
measure it with an Eastern yardstick" (134). He accuses them of being
''the haters of Europeanism" ("Reform" 132), too easily
threatened by foreign ways, too quick to accuse Russians who learn from others
of losing their nationality, and too ready to hold up the degraded peasant as
the example of the true Russian. Yet he agrees with them that, due to Peter,
Russians suffer from an inner duality and thus lack a clear sense of national
character. It is easier for a Russian to take on the outlook of a European than
to think like a Russian - "Because the Russian to himself is still a
riddle, and the significance and destiny of his native land.. .are likewise a
riddle to him" ("Slavophils" 135).
Like many of the Slavophiles, Belinsky thinks that Russia has a special
world-historical mission. The achievement of a strong sense of nationality in
Russia, for Belinsky, is not an end in itself but the means to the realization
of "a still greater idea of humanity" (131). Now that humanity is
beginning to accept the idea of universal brotherhood, in which all nations
learns from the others, Russia is in a path of development towards' a future in
which "we are destined to give our message and our thought to the
world" (135).
Another Westernizer,
Alexander Herzen, developed a distinctive Russian form of socialism, called
Populism, and his writings influenced European as well as Russian radicalism.
He was a Westernizer and a critic of the Slavophiles because he thought they
preached submission to power. They "preached the contempt of the West, and
yet the West alone could enlighten the dark gulf of Russian life; they
glorified the past, instead of emphasizing the need of liberation from this
past in favor of a future common to Russia and the West" (163). Autocracy
and the suppression ofindividua1liberty would be misfortunes for Russia and
dangers to Europe if they continued (162). If Russia is not emancipated, "she
will have no future but to throw herself upon Europe, like a semibarbarian and semicorrupted
horde devastating the civilized countries."
Yet, at the same
time, Herzen is disappointed in Europe and European republicanism. He writes,
in his periodical The Bell in 1867, that the effect of the vote in Europe has
been to arouse nationalist aggression rather than freedom ("Sobriety"
186). In his 1851 autobiography, he acknowledges that he does not believe the
future necessarily belongs to Europe: "We do not predict anything, but
neither do we believe that the destiny of mankind is tied up with Western
Europe. If Europe does not succeed in recovering through social transformation,
other countries will transform themselves" ("Development" 159).
One place where humanity might advance, he thinks, is the United States, a
republic that is "strong, rugged, energetic, persistent, without ruins of
the past to encumber her present journey" ("Sobriety" 186).
Another place of the future is Russia, because in important ways it is also,
like the United States, a new country. Herzen believes that Russia is entering
a stage of new possibilities after the Crimean War. This is not well
understood, however, because of "the standards which a study of Western
civilization has set up in our minds." These cannot grasp "the
peculiar and individual properties of Russia's national life"
("Evolution" 169). Only Russians who have not been cowed by a sense
of the greatness of the West, by European socialists, or by North Americans can
understand the Russian people. The West, by focusing exclusively on the history
of states, has disregarded or scorned the achievements and potential of Russia,
because the resemblance between Russian and Western institutional forms has
obscured the Russian reality (172). Russia is maligned by the very Europeans
she saved from Napoleon, and everything to her credit is turned against her.
England is admired for exploring and colonizing new worlds, but Russia's
tremendous exploit in colonizing Siberia is ignored - "history has hardly
taken notice" (170). It is no surprise that Europeans should hate the
Russian government and foreign policy, but they have turned their hatred
unjustly against the Russian people (170). Europe has no reason to feel
superior: "Up to her knees in blood," Europe is faced with class
conflict on a scale that must lead to class war. In Russia, on the other hand,
a tradition of "communistic landholding" remains that might be the solutio~ to European dilemmas (171). The Russia of the
future is the one whose call is "Liberation of the Peasants with their
Land" (173).
Russia might learn
from European mistakes and point out a new path because it is neither Eastern
nor Western. In 1860, Herzen wrote, in his newspaper The Bell, that Russian
aspirations bear "no resemblance whatever to the quietistic
self-deification of Eastern peoples" because they are directed towards the
future ("Future" 183). Russia is also freer than the "old
Western nations," who live equally in the present and the past, always trying
to continue their traditions: "They hold their inheritance on condition
that they transmit it safely" (183). Russia, in contrast, is "as
independent of time as of space. We have no ties of remembrance, we are not
bound by legacies... our history lies ahead." The very condition that
caused Chaadaev to despair is a sign of hope for
Herzen. Under Nicholas I, Russians were "insulted in our human dignity, we
were foreigners in our own home; feeling our strength, we were forced to
concentrate all our activity within our hearts and minds - and our minds grew
bold and intrepid" ("Freedom" 179). The forces of liberation are
gathering strength, and the Russian state is weakening. "Now think of the
result when this sixth part of the globe with its social instincts, bound no
longer by its German chains and stripped of memories and heritage, can
shout across to the Western workers, and they will realize that their cause is
the same" ("Future" 184).
Despite his hopes for
Russia, Herzen was no nationalist. He even offended many progressive Russians
by denying Russian hegemony over the other Slavs. In 1859, he proposed a
federation of Slavs on the basis ''that federations of related peoples make for
an incomparably more ample political life than does the splitting of one ethnic
group into its separate parts," but made it clear that "Russia has no
right to Poland" ("Federal Union" 174). Yet in the following
year, still advocating federation, he also claims that Russia is not just
Slavic, and that the Russian people, due to their humble condition, are in no
condition to look down upon others "from the heights of Western
civilization."
They have recognized
the equality of ''the Jew, the Finn, the Tartar, and the Kalmuk"
("Freedom" 179). "We have nothing - we are the beggars of this
world - nothing except aspirations, nothing but faith in ourselves.. ..Is it
not easier for such a people to shove its boat off the old shores?" The
goal is not national or ethnic self-realization, but human emancipation.
Although he called for
a new world of freedom, after 1848 Herzen had become adverse to violent
revolution ("Sobriety" 187). The Russian people might end by taking
violence into their own hands, which would be tragic, but Russian
revolutionaries in exile should not summon them to violence (190). Violence
will speed nothing, for communism will simply be inverted despotism.
Pan-Slavism
Herzen and the other
progressive Westernizers such as Belinsky were more truly universalizers
than Westernizers, and therefore the question of how to establish social
justice in Russia took priority, for them, over the relation of Russia to the
West. But, as Kohn observes, for conservative nationalists such as Nicholai Danilevsky, "the debate over Russia's relation with
Europe determined their entire outlook" (Mind 191). While the earlier
Slavophiles, despite their name, were concerned primarily with discerning the
essential national spirit of Russia, Danilevsky was
an advocate of Pan-Slavism, a political program to unite Slavs politically
under Russian leadership to counter Western imperial powers. In general, the
Slavophiles had belonged to what the Russians called the "generation of
the '40s," their outlook formed by an idealist Romanticism looking for
national spirit through the study of the past. Pan-Slavism was an ideology of
the "generation of the '60s," whose outlook was more
"scientific" and practical, attuned to the geopolitical struggles of
the imperialist Great Powers of the later nineteenth century.Nevertheless,
the ideas of the two groups overlapped.
In his Russia and
Europe, An Inquiry Into the Cultural and Political Relations of the Slav World
and of the Germano-Latin World, " published in 1869, Danilevsky
asks a question familiar to contemporary Americans: "Why do they hate
us?" In this case, the question is: why do European countries always band
together to work against Russia? His answer is that Europe and Russia are
fundamentally opposed, for they belonged to distinct and competing
civilizations. Europe belongs to the "Germano-Roman" civilization of
the West, and Russia belongs to the "Slavic" civilization in the
East. The source of European hostility thus "lies in the deep gulf
separating the world of the Slavs and the GermanoRoman
world - a gulf which reaches down to the very origins of the general stream of
universal history" (qtd. in Kohn, Mind 195). Europe especially hates
Russia because she fears that Western civilization is declining and Slavic
civilization is rising to dominate the world in its place.
Unlike the Russian Westemizers, Danilevsky does not
believe that Western truths are universal truths, or that history will find its
end in the achievements of Western civilization. Rather, all civilizations are
individual organisms subject to the laws of growth and decay. The Germano-Roman
civilization reached its peak in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and
it is now in degenerating. For the West has an inherent weakness in that it
came into being through Roman domination and violence, and its
capitalist
economic-social order continues to be oppressive. Russia and the West will
inevitably collide, first over the "Eastern question" (i.e. the fate
of the Ottoman empire), and then over the leadership of the world. Through the
"healthy dynamism" of this struggle, Russia will be cured of her
spiritual malaise, caused by Westernization, which has acted like a diseaSe upon her "social body," and she will
unite all Slav peoples to create Slavic civilization (196). This new spiritual
civilization will bring about world peace.
Danilevky's theory that different civilizations are based on
incommensurable principles, stemming from their divergent religious origins, is
uncannily close to Huntington's theory of the clash of civilizations. What
follows from both arguments is that the principles of Western civilization are
not, and cannot be, universal. For Danilevsky,
to think that the West is a universal civilization is to buy into a false
ideology of "Westemism," one which would
turn Russians and their brother Slavs into mere imitators of the West,
depriving them of "cultural significance" and "a great
historical future" (195). But a proper understanding of "the real
principles of the systematization of scientific-natural phenomena" shows
that every civilization is an independent organism that coheres according to
its own unique principles.
Yet, despite his
theory about the separate nature of civilizations, Danilevsky
believes that they have ''pan-human'' significance and that they playa role in world history's advance towards peace and unity.
Unlike later conceptions of civilizations in Darwinian competition, his theory
has stages in which each world-historical civilization succeeds a previous one
on the way to greater perfection. Human fulfillment has four dimensions:
religious, political, artistic-cultural and socio-economic. The Jewish
cultural-historical type was "exclusively religious" (197), the
Hellenic was "primarily artistic-cultural," and the Roman primarily
political (197-8). After these three one-sided "cultural-historical types,"
one needed to develop the fourth side, the socio-economic, and then integrate
all types into a culture favoring "many-sidedness" (199). Through
Christianity, Europeans seem to have achieved a many-sided culture, but they
have done so in an incomplete way, due to ''the violence of their
character" (199). The institutions of old Europe - Church, feudalism, and
scholasticism - were all despotic, and they have resulted in the three
anarchies of the modem age: Protestantism, materialism, and a society rent by
the contradiction between economic servitude and political freedom (200). These
are all indications of civilizational decay. Although the West has made
"staggering" achievements politically through the global reach of its
power and the idea of political freedom, these have not made Western
society successful, because they have not solved the problems in "the
socio-economic order," namely economic oppression. The attributes of modem
Western civilization therefore cannot "be considered a viable investment in
the treasury of mankind." (Nineteenth-century Russian thinkers on all
sides declined to see free-market capitalism as the great achievement of
socio-economic life.)
Although only in its
early stages, Slavic civilization promises to embody a many sidedness that is
complete. Orthodox religion is vital and true, Slavic political capacity is
demonstrated by the strength and vastness of the Russian state, which has not
spread through violent colonization but by peaceful absorption, and Russia has
no landless masses, so its socio-economic life is not based on mass misery
(206). Thus Russia is inherently stable, unlike Europe which depends upon
exploitation. Only in the artistic cultural realm is Russia behind, because so
much of history has been absorbed necessarily in fighting invaders (207). But
once there is strong foundation, including "consciousness of Slav racial
unity," an independent culture will follow - free of "servile
attitude towards the West" which has infected the Russian soul: "the
struggle against the Germano-Roman world (without which Slav independence is
impossible) will help to eradicate the cancer of imitativeness and the servile
attitude towards the West, which through unfavorable conditions has eaten its
way into the Slav body and soul" (210).
The Question of Nihilism
The link between
Nihilism and the Westernizers can be seen in Belinsky's statement: "My God
is negation." The term "nihilism" was probably coined by Joseph
de Maistre, a refugee from the French Revolution
who ended up in the Russian Court. He had tremendous influence on Russian
thinkers, especially Chaadaev. Writing in the first
decade of the nineteenth centwy, he argued that the
French Revolution resulted from ''the insurrection against God'" ("theophobia"),
and nihilism ("rienisme") (Billington 272). The first Russian to use the term was N.
I. Nadezhdin, who used it to describe the materialism
that opposed his Schellingian idealism (Billington
312). Those who were self-avowed nihilists were radical Westernizers, negating
all tradition - yet they believed in progress and science.
Russian nihilism was
an extreme form of Westernism. The term was used to indicate a loss of belief
in everything except science. According to Herzen: Nihilism...is logic without
restraint; it is science without dogmas; it is unconditional submission to
experience and acceptance without a murmur of all consequences, whatever they
may be, if they flow from observation and are demanded by reason. Nihilism does
not turn something into nothing, but reveals that nothing, which has been taken
for something, is an optical illusion. (qtd. In Treadgold
I: 185)
The anarchist Peter
Kropotkin writes, in his Memoirs of a Revolutionist, that nihilism in Russia
has been caused by the disappointment with the results of the emancipation of
the serfs, which only revealed that servitude is such a deeply rooted social
habit of Russians that it can only be overcome by thorough-going revolt against
all traditions and convention (123). Kropotkin goes on to say that Europeans
have wrongly associated nihilism, which was a way of life, with terrorism.
While the terrorists of the 1870s did come out of the populist, rather than
nihilist, movement, nevertheless one could argue that there is a conceptual
link between terrorism and nihilism. The nihilist Dmitry Pisarev
wrote in 1860 that '''what can be smashed must be smashed'" (qtd. in Kohn,
Mind 140).
Yet the ideas of
nihilism themselves could result in destructive violence, as Dostoyevsky
perceived. He wrote about this in his novel The Devils (also translated as The
Possessed), which is an indictment of Russia's Europeanized educated classes.
Dostoyevsky's political views are understandably less discernable in his novels
than in his journalism, particularly in his Diary of a Writer, a series of
commentaries on politics, social life and art which he published intermittently
from 1873 to 1881. In many of his reflections, Dostoyevsky expresses views
typical of Pan-Slavism, but complicates them with a sense of indebtedness to
the West. Not only does he hold a position within the debates over the question
of the relation of Europe to Russia, but he also offers an interesting analysis
of the debates.
Like Danilevsky, Dostoyevsky observes that Europeans have a fundamental
distrust of Russia no matter how it acts. He believes that this is because they
believe that Russians are at bottom not truly civilized Europeans but Asiatic
barbarians, Tartars and Huns bent on destruction for its own sake. Why cannot
Europe recognize that all Russia has wanted is to serve her? Dostoyevsky
answers: "The main reason is that they are altogether unable to recognize
us as theirs. . . consider us alien to their civilization; they regard us as
strangers and impostors. . . Turks and Semites are spiritually closer to them
than we, Aryans. All,this has a very important
reason: we carry to mankind an altogether different idea than they"
(1046). This, despite the efforts ofWesternizers to
convince Europeans that Russians are incapable of having any ideas of their own
and are content to imitate Europeans. While Europeans are wrong in their
perception of what moves Russians, they are right in their sense that it is
something completely alien to Europe, and thus they agree unwittingly with the
Slavophiles. Even the most extreme Westernizers, the socialists and liberals,
who are in exile in Europe, show their essential Russian soul by their
implacable negation of all European traditions, and hence of all European
civilization (352). While Europeans think that the Russian radicals who negate
all their traditions display an uncomprehending barbarism, they are in reality
displaying an uncomprehending adherence to the Russian idea - they are, despite
themselves, "full blooded and good Russians" (357). What is
essentially Russian is its preservation of the true word of Christ through the
Orthodox Church. Its world-historical mission is to spread that word - hence
its interest in the Eastern question, namely the reclaiming of lands inhabited
by Slavs and Greeks, and its taking of Constantinople. Constantinople will be
the new spiritual capital from which Russia will rule the East - meaning the
.Christian East. She has the moral right to rule because she is "a leader
of Orthodoxy, as its protectress and guardian." Russia will not take
Constantinople out of ambition or violence: ''No, this would be a genuine
exaltation of Christ's truth, preserved in the East, a new exaltation of
Christ's Cross and the final word of Orthodoxy, which is headed by Russia"
(365). But the European nations do not appreciate the loftiness of Russia's
motivations and they work to stop her. Writing in 1881, Dostoyevsky counseled
Russia to bide her time, given the forces that can oppose her, and appear not
to want to "meddle with European affairs." The Europeans will stop
being concerned with Russia and begin fighting among themselves, and at ''the
opportune moment," Russia can act (1052).
Russia is also
destined to rule Asia. Instead of embroiling herself in European affairs, in which
she is always an inferior, Russia should turn her attention to colonizing
Asiatic Russia, where she will experience the joy of rule: "In Europe we
were hangers-on and slaves, whereas we shall go to Asia as masters. In Europe
we were Asiatics, whereas in Asia we, too, are
Europeans. Our civilizing mission in Asia will bribe our spirit and drive us
thither" (1048). Russians have been too leery of paying attention to their
Asiatic territories, for they fear the charge by Europeans that they are Asiatic:
"We must banish the slavish fear that Europe will call us Asiatic
barbarians, and that it will be said that we are more Asiatics
than Europeans. This fear that Europe might regard us as Asiatics
has been haunting us for almost two centuries" (1044). There is little
that Russia can do to convince Europeans of the contrary; despite the fact that
Russia saved European nations from Napoleon, they immediately "began to
look on us with most obvious malevolence and the bitterest suspicion"
(1045). In retrospect, Russia should have sided with Napoleon, who would have
been happy to give her the East ifhe could have the
West.
Now there is evidence
that Germany, who wants to rule the West, supplanting the power of the Latin
peoples, would be happy to let Russia rule the East without interference (912).
And this will "regenerate" Russia: "Asia is our future
outlet" (1050). Through settling Asia by building railroads, Russia will
have land for all in the future, while overcrowded Europe declines into an
"inevitable and humiliating communism." (And, once Russia has such a
clear goal, Europe will ''respect us" and invest! [1051].)
Dostoyevsky shares
the sense of the Slavophiles that Europe is decaying, and that she will once
again turn to Russia for help: "She is going to tell us that we too are
Europe; that, consequently, we have exactly the same 'order of things' as
she; that not in vain have we imitated her during two hundred years, boasting
that we were Europeans, and that by saving her, we are thereby saving ourselves...
then, perhaps, for the first time, all of us would grasp at once to what extent
all the while we did not resemble Europe, despite our two-hundred year craving
for, and dreams about becoming Europe – dreams which used to reach the
proportions of passionate fits" (258-9).
Dostoyevsky is not
always consistent in his discussion of the relation between Russia and the
West. Sometimes, he stresses the differences between the two civilizations:
"under no circumstances can a Russian be converted into a real European as
long as he remains the least bit Russian. And, if this be so, it means that
Russia is something independent and peculiar, not resembling Europe at all, but
important by itself' (357). Yet, despite the clear separation of the destinies
of East and West, he thinks Russians should be grateful to Europeans. If Peter
had not "opened a window on Europe," Russia would have remained
insular, keeping its Orthodox truth to itself. Starting with Peter's communion
with Europe, ''we have done nothing but live through a communion with all human
civilization" (360). Russia has learned to be universal in her outlook, in
a way suited to her world-historical mission, which is the realization of
Christian principles through the disinterested "universal service of mankind"
(361). While all other nations have a particular character, the Russian
character has universal import. It aims to bring about "general
pacification," meaning world peace, beginning with the unification of the
Slavs and ending in ''the ultimate unity of mankind" (362). For the sake
of this goal Russia must have Constantinople. But, until now, she was not able
to accomplish this. Peter brought her into contact with "the coarse
Germans," who played such an important role to the detriment of the
Russian government. How much more damage would have been
done if Peter or
other earlier rulers had adopted to conquer Constantinople before Russia was
ready - Russia would have fallen into the hands of the "subtle"
Greeks who would "have dragged her along some new Asiatic path,"
involving cultural exclusivity (363).
Not only has the
encounter with European culture been useful to Russia, but Dostoyevsky judges
as well that it has made Russians such as himself partly European: He writes
that "under no circumstances can we renounce Europe. Europe is our second
fatherland, and I am the first ardently to profess this; I have always
professed this" (581). "Europe, even as Russia, is our mother, our
second mother. We have taken much from her; we shall again take, and we shall
not wish to be ungrateful to her" (1048). European civilization has been
internalized, and cannot, or should not, be excised. The sense of psychological
"split" is one of the great themes in Dostoyevsky's novels. Despite
the suffering it involves, Dostoyevsky does not renounce the self-consciousness
it entails, which has become the condition of his own art.
Vladimir Solovev
An influential mystic
and philosopher in Russia at the time, Vladimir Solovev
began writing as a Slavophile, but became an ardent Westernizer. He remained a
Christian, however, unlike most radical Westernizers who were materialists. Solovev wants both the unity of the whole Christian Church,
and political liberalization as well, for he holds that Christ called believers
to "'champion freedom and social justice'" (qtd. in Kohn, Mind 214).
He advocates trying to unite Russia with the West, fearing the threat to
civilization from Asia he calls "Pan-Mongolism."
In his 1888 critique
of Danilevsky, Solovev
questions that thinker's answer to the question: Why don't they love us? Danilevsky had answered that the West knows Russia will
replace it in importance. The truer answer is that "Europe views Russia
with hostility and anxiety, for she recognizes the dark and enigmatic elemental
forces alive in the Russian people, and, together with Russia's spiritual and
cultural poverty, that country's vast and well defined ambition" ("Slavophils" 219-20). While Russia is strong, she is
"morally crippled" and bent on expansion without any indication that
such expansion will yield any benefit to others (220). For there is no real
evidence that Russians or Slavs constitute a distinctive civilization that has
made meaningful cultural contributions independent of the West. This does not
invalidate them, but merely shows that Russia is part of European culture. Even
the Slavophiles have received their ideas from European philosophy. On its own.
Russian intellectual life moves between an "extreme skepticism,"
which is so negative as to "destroy the idea of truth itself," and a
mysticism which leads.to complete submission to higher entity, even
"suicidal fanaticism" - thus, no real philosophy emerges. Admittedly,
Russian novels have distinctive character, but only in the way that European
arts manifest national character (219).
In a similar critique
of Dostoyevsky, written in 1891, Solovev notes a
contradiction in the novelist between his vision of the ideal of mankind,
united by the loving acceptance of others, and his many expressions of hatred
towards Jews, Poles, Germans, the French, Europe, and non-Orthodox
Christianity (and, one could add, America) (221). True Christian ideals are to
be found in universality, not in the exaltation of a national outlook at the
expense of others. Like Chaadaev, Solovev
argues for a Christianity that is broader in scope than nationalist Orthodoxy,
and believes that the source of Russia's universalist aspirations is the West.
He finds Dostoyevsky caught between two tendencies; the author therefore should
not be taken as a guide to political action.
Leo Tolsto
It is Leo Tolstoy's
analysis of the meaning of West and East that departs most significantly from
the terms of the discourse discussed so far, in directions that are
recognizably contemporary. This is no accident, for Tolstoy's thought had
tremendous influence on social critique allover the
world, beginning in the late nineteenth century.
The thought of Gandhi
and Martin Luther King are only the two best-known examples of his influence,
according to Steven G. Marks' How Russia Shaped the Modern World. In Tolstoy,
West and East largely lose their identification with the Occident and Orient as
civilizations, and become much closer to what we now would call the developed
and undeveloped worlds.
Tolstoy's view of the
relation between Russia and the West can be seen in his 1906 article "The
Meaning of the Russian Revolution." The article concerned the first
Russian Revolution of 1905, after which the tsar was forced to introduce a
representative assembly. This move suggested that Russia was on the way towards
liberal democracy, and Tolstoy asks whether this is a desirable goal. All
government, he argues, has the same nature, based not on contract but violence.
A small group forces others into economic production, and they submit
because they want peaceful lives and need to support their families (325).
Governments are changed by popular revolution when the powerful, who live off
the work of others, become depraved, or when those who are ruled, becoming more
educated, come to see their submission as wrong. This has happened in
"Western nations" in the past; it is happening in Russia at present;
and it has not yet happened in the Eastern nations (Le. Turkey, Persia, India,
and China) (327). In non-Western societies, the educated classes want to throw
off the existing order and establish what they see in the West: ''the
industrial, commercial, and technical improvements, and that external glitter
to which the Western nations have attained under their altered
governments" (327). But are they right?
Tolstoy answers no,
arguing that representative systems are no less oppressive than despotic ones
(328). Democracies still are based on violence - apparent in their wars unjust
systems of taxation, the appropriation of common property into private hands,
and colonization. The more people participate in government, the more they
became depraved. While democracies are more economically and militarily
effective than other systems, and the lifestyles of their "leisured
classes" are more expansive, do most of their citizens really enjoy lives
that are "more secure, freer, or above all, more reasonable and
moral?" (329). In despotism, corruption is centered on the ruler and his
followers; in democracy, every person who votes is corruptible because bribable.
In despotism, a few monopolize wealth; in democracy, a much larger class has
leisure and security, and because it is so large, it needs to be supplied with
constant objects of consumption. To produce these, ever more workers must leave
the land and become dependent upon wages, and their condition grows
steadily worse. Consumers enjoy the "comforts and pleasures" provided
by others and becoming willing to employ violence to keep them; thus, one fmds "the spread of a lying and inflammatory
press" and the promotion of national animosities. Now that people do not
live by the fruit of their own labors, that is,by
engaging in agriculture, they must get goods from other lands; they do this by
engaging in international trade that corrupts others, such as the arms trade.
Or they oppress others by violence, as can be seen in the robbery of the people
of Asia and Africa. The struggle of all against all becomes so
"habitual" that it structures knowledge; science "has decided
that the struggle and enmity of all against all is a necessary, unavoidable,
and beneficent condition of human life" (331). Western nations deceive
themselves by calling all of this "civilization" (333), and they hold
that civilization is good and necessary and must be spread everywhere. (In
"Western nations," Tolstoy includes "Germany, Austria, Italy,
France, the United States, and especially Great Britain" (332) - the
United States is included now in the West, in a new way, different from in
works previously considered.) And now, in the liberal revolution of 1905,
Russia is invited to join civilization, and "travel this path of
destruction."
Tolstoy prophesies an
impending, ''unavoidable collision between the Western and the Eastern
nations" as the Western nations assert power and. spread corruption, and
the Eastern nations submit temporarily to that power because their governments
have taught them to submit (334-5). Westernization, for Tolstoy, is a practical
fact, not a spiritual principle - the modernization of Japan shows that an Eastern
nation can also become part of Western "civilization." Russia is at a
crossroads, faced with the choice between submission and corruption.
Neither choice is good: the Russian government has lost legitimacy and Russians
can no longer submit to it, but the failure of Western ways is now evident. And
Russia would lose itself if its productive life was no longer based on the
land. What is to be done?
Tolstoy believes that
Russians should take another path entirely, one that involves neither
submission to the Russian government nor imitation of the West. Russian
peasants are self-sufficient and used to working without government
interference. Already some village communes set themselves in remote areas in
order to live independently. All they need to do is "cease to obey"
and ''refuse to participate" and the whole basis of the state will be
undermined (337): "It is evident that a great majority of men can be
enslaved by a small minority only if the enslaved themselves take part in their
own enslavement" (340).
The simplest way to
bring about change is not to allow oneself to be enslaved.Yet
people who suffer from violence turn to it, and therefore act against their own
interest. They yield to power out of "suggestion" or hypnotism (343).
This is especially true when religious consciousness is weak. If God were
primary, no one would submit to human powers, but instead of submitting to God,
people yield to their passions and go the direction of the herd. Russians,
because of their spiritual nature, have the potential to seek the different
way, and yet they might fail to liberate people from human power "and
leave to some other happier Eastern race the leadership in the great work"
(343). There are signs of a global change in consciousness which promise that
people will understand soon what really is freedom.
A common objection to
such "anarchist" views, is that the return to the land would involve
a retreat from civilization. But Tolstoy argues, civilization is a fallacy, a
statement of an ideal rather than a description of reality (346-47). Supporters
of "civilization," including ,Socialists, justify present
imperfections by the promise that they will lead to future perfection - as if
those individuals who are competing today will love one another tomorrow, or as
if the machines which belong to the system of capital and the state will
continue just as they are after the latter is abolished. But we cannot imagine
the future, and those who think they do, and who are willing to sacrifice the
present for the sake of future happiness, wrongly think they know what is the
happiness of others.
The
"superstition of civilization" prevents people from working for a
"free and reasonable life." To those not superstitious about
civilization, "civilization" is obviously merely the vanity of the
governing classes. A return to agriculture will not stop people from being
inventive; but they will invent things that are useful to them. It seems
impossible that people will be able to change how they think of themselves so
radically, but history shows the possibility of such transformation. It is
reasonable to hope that a new spirit of brotherhood will arise, and that the
present hostility of the nations is nearing its end (353).
Given that the West
is now equivalent to liberal democracy, industrialism, and capitalism, and the
East to what has more recently been called the "underdeveloped
World," through Russia's agrarian economy, she now has become part of the
East, according to Tolstoy. The Western, or industrial, world fmds it harder to participate in the new humanitarian
spirit of the times, because it has followed the false path for so long.
But "the
majority of the Eastern peoples, including the Russian nation, will not have to
alter their lives at all . . . We of the Eastern nations should be thankful for
fate for placing us in a position in which we can benefit by the example of the
Western nations," and we should take "a different path, one easier,
more joyful, and more natural than the one the Western nations have
traveled" (357).
Tolstoy's critique of
civilization returns to the older notion of civilization as a universal
condition. Like Rousseau, he values this notion negatively. Yet Tolstoy still
specifies what he is critiquing as the West, because of his context in Russian
social thought, even though such identification does not belong to the
structure of his argument in the way that it did for the Slavophiles. Given his
enormous influence in formulating anti-Western discourse, both on the part of "Western"
and "non-Western" progressive intellectuals,
Tolstoy may well be
most responsible for the tendency of twentieth -century social and cultural
criticism to name the object of its critique "the West," rather than
capitalism, commercialism, modernity, industrialization, etc. The significance
of equating the West with industrialization or modernization, however, is that
it begins to dislodge the West from its formerly inseparable double, the East,
especially as the two refer to distinct cultures. In the twentieth century,
many of the dominant meanings of the West do not depend upon an Other with a
determinate content, be it the East, Asia, or the Orient. Rather, they depend
on an absence: the non-West, the undeveloped world, the Rest. None of these
require the West to be grounded by any relative location.
The general European
view- however, was that Russia was Oriental and autocratic, ready to unleash
barbarian hordes upon the civilized world. This view had been encouraged by
radical exiles in the nineteenth century especially, whose polemics regarding
the autocracy of their homeland encouraged the Russophobia of others. (At the
same time, Dostoyevsky believed that Russian socialists in exile, through their
condemnation of the, institutions of Europe, negated the West as thoroughly as
any Slavophile.) Some of the greatest critics of Russia were socialists,
alarmed the expansionist tendencies being displayed by the chief power of
Reaction. Marx warned in 1853, for example- that Russia intended a series of
conquests to both its west and east "'to the ultimate realization of the
Slavonic Empire which certain fanatical Pan-Slavistic
philosophers dreamed of" (qtd. In Kohn, Pan-Slavism 107).
This dual role of
socialism, as both a form of radical Westernism and as a radical critique of
the existing West, is evident in Marxist discourse. Marxism has been one of the
primary sources for the characterization of the West as capitalist and
imperialist. And the strongest meaning of the West for much of the second half
of the twentieth century was derived trom the Cold
War division between the communist block as East and NATO as West. Yet, as
Alastair Bonnett makes clear in his chapter
"Communists Like Us: The Idea of the West in the Soviet Union":
"The rejection of the West, and the associated rise of Russian
nationalism, from the late 1920' s onwards, has tended to overshadow the
intensity and complexity of the Westernising spirit
of earlier Bolshevik" (48).
It might be true to
say that the late nineteenth-century Russian Marxists rejected the distinction
between Russia and the West altogether, as being unimportant in relation to the
fundamental categories of capitalist and proletariat. George Plekhanov, the
''father of Russian Marxism," critiqued the Russian populists in an article
entitled "Our Differences" for their belief that socialism could be
realized in the Russian peasant commune; the mir, without going through
capitalism. Tellingly, in this article Plakanov
puts scare quotes
around the "West" and "Western Europe," thereby implicitly
questioning their validity as meaningful categories of analysis (157). Lenin's
writings also do not employ the concept of the West.
Finally, "Eurasianism," a completely new idea of Russia's
relation to the West, emerged around the time of the Russian Revolution, of
1917. It fell victim to Stalinism, and was continued by Russian emigres. "Eurasianism" held that Russia was essentially neither
European nor Slavic but had its own national character made up of many
elements, including Asiatic ones. While the older sense of Russian nationality
had been based on Russia's opposition to the Asiatic "hordes," and
nineteenth-century nationalists had taken the "Western" attitude that
Russians, as Slavs, were white Europeans who needed to civilize the Asians
within and without their country, the Eurasians wanted to acknowledge that the
Finns, Tartars, Mongols and Scythians were also truly Russian. At the turn of
the century, the historical scholarship that brought to light the contributions
of the "Asiatic" peoples to Russian history fed the imagination of
artists, who started to express the "Asiatic within" through the
introduction of folkloric themes in music, dance and other arts (Riasanovsky Asia 19-29). An admiror
of V. Splovjev, Alexander Blok used this new cultural
identification in his poem "Scythians," written in 1918 to protest
the Europeans war against communist Russia:
You are millions. We
are hordes and hordes and hordes.
Try and take us on!
Yes, we are Scythians! Y
es, we are Asians.With slanted and greedy eyes!
For you, the ages,
for us a single hour.
We,like obedient slaves,
Held up a shield between two enemy races
The Tatars and Europe!
For ages and ages
your old furnace raged
And drowned out the roar of avalanches,
And Lisbon and Messina's fall T
o you was but a monstrous fairy tale!
For hundreds of years
you gazed at the East,
Storing up and melting -own our jewels,
And, jeering. you merely counted the days
Until your cannons you couId point at us!
The time is come.
Trouble beats its wings -
And every day our grudges grow,
And the day will come when every trace
Of your Paestums may vanish!
O, old world! While
you still survive,
While you still suffer your sweet torture,
Come to a halt, sage as Oedipus,
Before the ancient riddle of the Sphinx!
Russia is a Sphinx.
Rejoicing, grieving,
And drenched in black blood,
It gazes, gazes, gazes at you,
With hatred and with love!
It has been ages
since you've loved
As our blood still loves!
You have forgotten that there is a love
That can destroy and burn!
We love ail - the
heat of cold numbers,
The gift of divine visions,
We understand all- sharp Gallic sense
And gloomy Teutonic genius...
We remember ail- the
hell of Parisian streets,
And Venetian chills,
The distant aroma of lemon groves,
And the smoky towers of Cologne...
We love the flesh -
its flavor and its color,
And the stifling, mortal scent of flesh...
Is it our fault if your skeleton cracks,
In our heavy, tender paws?
When pulling back on
the reins
Of playful, high-spirited horses,
is our custom to break their heavy backs
And tame the stubborn slave girls...
Come to us! Leave the
horrors of war,
And come to our peaceful embrace!
Before it's too late - sheathe your old sword,
Comrades! We shaIl be brothers!
But if not - we have
nothing to lose,
And we are not above treachery!
For ages and ages you will be cursed
By your sickly, belated offspring!
Throughout the woods
and thickets
In front of pretty Europe
We will spread out! We'll turn to you
With our Asian muzzles.
Come everyone, come
to the Urals!
We're clearing a battlefield there
Between steel machines breathing integrals
And the wild Tatar Horde!
But we are no longer
your shield,
Henceforth we'll not do battle!
As mortal battles rages we'll watch
With our narrow eyes!
We will not lift a
finger when the cruel
Huns Rummage the pockets of corpses,
Burn cities, drive cattle into churches,
And roast the meat of our white brothers!...
Come to your senses for
the last time, old world!
Our barbaric lyre is calling you
One fmal time, to a joyous brotherly feast
To a brotherly feast oflabor and of peace!
Here Blok plays upon
the fearful fantasies of Europeans concerning the Russians as Asiatic hordes-
to some extent in mockery and to some extent as a claim of identity.
Reminiscent of
earlier complaints about European ingratitude- the poem argues that the
Russians- the Scythians- have protected Europe despite Europe's greed and lust
for war.
Now that the new
Russia is under attack from old Europe- it is willing to unleash what Europe
has always feared - but the better possibility is peace and brotherhood. The
poem expresses the duality between Russia's love and understanding of Europe-
on one side, and its hatred and resentment, on the other. It also represents of
a moment when some artists and scholars were formulating ideas of national
identity that rejected the notion of the authentic Russian in favor of a Russia
formed by many strands, in a way that anticipates aspects of contemporary
multiculturalism.
Thus as we have seen
above, the West was transformed from merely a political-geographic term
to a political and social concept as well, through the theorizing of Russian
intellectuals about the relation of their country to Europe. As a concept –
that is, as a mode of generalization and explanation - the West was used as a
counter-ideal, or ideal other, of Russia. As such, it mimicked other
dichotomies of nineteenth –century thought: between civilization and culture,
the mechanistic and organic, the French and the German, the traditional and the
modern. The West however became typed as a unity with certain historical
characteristics - as dynamic or as violent, as a tradition or as modernity -
and the range of Russian claims about its characteristics later were repeated
elsewhere. Anti-colonial political ideologies took up the Russian framework in
the twentieth century: for example, Gustave Von Grunebaum,
in his 1965 Modern Islam: The Search for Cultural Identity, claims that Arab
and other third-world nationalists are ''taking the road the Russians took
little more than a century ago" (18).
Eurocentrism, Afrocentrism, Multiculturalism
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