ISSN: 2158-7051 ==================== INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF RUSSIAN STUDIES ==================== ISSUE NO. 4 ( 2015/1 ) |
RUSSIA BETWEEN EAST AND WEST: THE 200-YEAR-OLD DILEMMA
ANIL ÇİÇEK*
Summary
Should Russia
become part of the West, or follow an Eastern path? This has been a centuries-old
discussion among Russian intellectuals. For Westernizers in Russia, the “West” symbolized
progress, freedom, democracy, civil society, normality, and a nation-state.
Their opponents saw the West as representing moral decadence in the beginning,
and later capitalist exploitation. This paper attempts to lay out the
foundations and the evolution of the 200-year-old discussion of Russia’s
place in the world. It briefly examines the period of Muscovite Russia, where
the foundations of the authoritarian state tradition were laid and further
strengthened. The paper then focuses on the period of Peter the Great’s reign,
in which educated Russians
became increasingly acquainted with Western European culture and started having
doubts about Russia’s
status in the face of perceived European superiority. Trying to summarize how
the international and internal developments of the 1800s and 1900s have
affected the debate about Russia’s
place between East and West, the paper then examines the current state of
discussions in Russia
under Putin’s leadership and finally attempts to make predictions for the
future.
Key Words: Muscovite
Russia, Moscow, St Petersburg,
Autocracy, Conservatism, Muscovy - Third Rome, Petrine Revolution,
Westernization, Napoleonic Wars, Decembrist Uprising, Romantic Nationalism,
Slavophilism, Pan-Slavism, Liberalism, Russian Socialism, Marxism, Bolshevism, Neo-Official
Nationalism, Putinism.
Introduction
The place of Russia
between West and East has always been a traditional debate among Russian
intellectuals. Westernizers saw the “East” as linked with autocracy, despotism, and
empire. Their opponents admired precisely these features, which for them
signified a strong state, unity, and order.[1] According to James Billington, no nation ever poured
more intellectual energy into answering the question of national identity than
Russia.[2] Nikolai Berdyaev, the
eminent twentieth-century Russian philosopher, wrote that the “problem of East
and West” was an “eternal” one for Russia. Berdyaev believed that the source of
Russian troubles lay in the “inconsistency of the Russian spirit” due to the “conflict
of the Eastern and Western elements in her”. Russia, he argued, always
contained within its wide territory an invisible and shifting border between
two continents, and thus Russian society was forever torn between two cultures.
Berdyaev insisted that Russia could not discover its true calling or its place
in the world until it resolved its internal conflict between East and West.[3]
Throughout its history, Russia has been estranged from
European dynamics. Its nationalism and national ideology are marked by a double
game of attraction and revulsion towards Europe in particular and the West in
general.[4]
From the 10th to the 13th centuries, Kievan Rus’[5]
(Russia of Kiev) was well-integrated into the medieval economic system.
However, the Tartar invasion that resumed in 1237 and lasted more than 250
years tore Russia away from the West. When the Principality of Moscow
reorganized itself and rolled back the Tartar invaders, a new Russia was born,
which considered itself as the heir of Orthodox Byzantium, different from the
Catholic and Protestant West. The victory of Moscow began the Russian drive
towards the Siberian vastness.
The rise of Peter the Great marked a turning point in Russian history. The reforms and Westernization process initiated by Peter the Great is described as “the Petrine revolution”[6] by
Russian historian Sergei Mikhailovich Solov’ev. The Westernization process of
Peter liberated Russia from its medieval “clannishness” and oriented it towards
Europe.
The emancipation of nobles by Peter
from obligatory state service in 1762 started a period of journeys by the
Russian aristocracy to Western capitals such as Paris, London, Amsterdam, and
Vienna. This period is coined by Orlando Figes as “The Grand Tour”.[7]
Famous writer, poet, and historian Nikolai Karamzin, after travelling around
Europe, came to the conclusion that European people had a different way of
thinking than Russians.
Europe was described as “corrupt”,
“decadent”, “false”, “superficial”, “materialist”, and “egoistical” by famous
writers such as Fonvizin, Herzen, and Dostoevsky. The constant repetition of these epithets
signaled the emergence of an ideology – a distinctive view of Russia in the
mirror of the West. The idea that the West was morally corrupt was echoed by
virtually every writer from Pushkin to the Slavophiles. Herzen and Dostoevsky
placed it at the heart of their messianic visions of Russia’s destiny to save
the fallen West.[8]
Russia, under Peter the Great,
sought Europe’s approval and wanted to be recognized as equals by it. However, there
was also uncertainty about Russia’s place in Europe. Did Russia belong
to the West or East? Russia’s educated élites were aware that Russia was not
“Europe”. If Russia could not become a part of “Europe”, it should take more
pride in being “different”. In this nationalist mythology the “Russian soul”
was awarded a higher moral value than the material achievements of the West. Russia
had a Christian mission to save the world.[9]
The French Revolution of 1789 and
the following Jacobin reign of terror badly shook the belief among Russia’s
educated élites that Europe was the source of progress and enlightenment. At
the height of Napoleon’s invasion of Russia in 1812, many officers discovered
that it was the peasants and the serfs who were the real patriots. These
officers later would stand up for the “nation” and the “people’s cause”, in what would become known as the Decembrist[10]
uprising, on 14 December 1825.
Decembrists struggled in their minds to reform the Russian Empire based on
the model of the European national states.[11]
Young idealists such as Vladimir
Fyodorovich Odoyevsky saw the Decembrist uprising as an example of how European
ideas could slowly corrupt Russia. Inspired by German idealism, Odoyevsky pioneered
a Romantic nationalist position in the debate about Russia’s place in Europe.
Peter Chaadaev is no doubt one of the
most important figures in the debate about Russia’s place between the East and West.
In his famous work First Philosophical
Letter, published in 1836, he raised the question of Russia’s place in
world history. Chaadaev’s letter triggered the Romantic nationalists to develop
a comprehensive position known as Slavophilism, which claimed that the Russian
way of life was superior to that of Europe. The discussion launched by Chaadaev
created a controversy between the Slavophiles and Westerners that dominated
Russian political thought until modern times.
The victory of 1812 promoted a new
interest and pride in Russia’s past. The masterpiece of Nikolai Karamzin, History of the Russian State, which was
published in 1818, was considered a rediscovery of Russian history and Russian
pride. The common conviction among the educated elites that Russia’s history
started with the process of Westernization under the reign of Peter the Great
rapidly faded away. The distant past of Russia became a valuable source where
the answers to the questions about the country’s nature and destiny were sought.
Following the European revolutions of
1848[12],
the Russian state severely restricted public political space and moved in the
direction of Romantic nationalism. The humiliating defeat in the Crimean War in
1856 openly demonstrated the technological inferiority of Russia before its
European rivals. The Russian state, reassessing its position, decided this time
to move in the direction of the Westernizers. Despite the expectations of the
Westernizers for radical reforms, the state only took minor steps that were far
from answering their hopes. Thus, the stance of the Westernizers radicalized,
splitting them into three major positions: liberal, socialist, and Marxist. As
a result of the state’s choice of the Westernization path, the Romantic
nationalist movement also shifted from a Slavophile, isolationist line towards
a pan-Slavist, aggressive line that advocated confrontation with Europe.
The assassination of Tsar Alexander
II in 1881 caused the further restriction of public political space by the
state. The 1880s was a period during which the political debate was dominated
by Romantic pan-Slavist nationalists. By the 1890s, a new group, the Marxists,
came to the forefront of public political debate. The Marxist position split
into a Menshevik position and a Bolshevik position in 1903.[13]
Following the Bolshevik Revolution
of 1917, the Bolshevik position was the position of the state and liberalism
came to an end in Russia. The only position that survived along with Bolshevism
during Bolshevik rule was the Romantic nationalist one. During the Second World
War, the Russian debate about Europe was suspended as the country mobilized all
its sources to fight fascism. However, nationalist sentiment still played an
important role in boosting the morale of the nation.
During the de-Stalinization process
that started with Khrushchev, the Soviet state shifted from considering the
West as a “hostile camp of imperialism” towards considering it as “the
capitalist system”, which was “much less advanced than the socialist bloc”.
Under Gorbachev, the state’s
position changed again, now considering Europe or the West as a potential
partner. During the years of “perestroika” and “glasnost”, the liberal position
found fertile ground to flourish again, soon becoming the dominant position in
the Russian debate about Europe. Following the disintegration of the Soviet
Union, the new Russian state under Boris Yeltsin moved closer to the liberal
position. However, it was also during the Yeltsin period that the Romantic
nationalist position made a fast recovery and was ever more strongly felt in
the debate. Moreover, the majority of the communists, who found themselves
without a camp in this debate, soon adopted the Romantic nationalist
position.
Putin
took the post of President as the war in Chechnya was beginning and Russian politics
and economy were swept into an atmosphere of turmoil. Since coming to power in
1999, Putin has purposefully employed Russian imperial nostalgia and
ethnocentric thinking for the restoration of Russian national pride. Russia has
witnessed a sharp autocratic turn with Putin’s immense centralization of power.
The Putin administration adopted an ideology of “Neo-Official Nationalism”,
based on Orthodoxy, autocracy, and national pride and strengthened by a Eurasianist and, to a certain extent, Slavophile
influence. This new position of the state created suitable conditions for the
Romantic nationalist position to dominate the public debate with ever-growing
strength.
Muscovite
Russia – The Center of Autocracy and Absolutism
The
first reference to “the village of Moscow” was made in an old
Russian manuscript of 1147. In 1156, Prince Yuri
Vladimirovich Dolgoruky erected timber walls on
the present-day site of the Kremlin. He is regarded as the founder of
the city of Moscow.[14]
From the 10th to the 13th centuries, Kievan Rus’ was
the dominant figure of the Russian land and was well integrated into the
medieval economic system. The Tartar (or Tatar) invasion that resumed in 1237
and lasted more than 250 years tore Russia away from the West. Despite having devastating
consequences for Kievan Rus’, the Tartar rule played an important role in the
rise of Moscow and subsequently the Russian Empire.
Moscow became the seat of the grand
dukes of Vladimir-Suzdal (1271), who later assumed the title of Grand Dukes of
Moscow. “Muscovy” gradually achieved dominance over the neighboring
principalities and the head of the Russian Orthodox Church relocated to Moscow in
the 14th century in recognition of the city’s growing authority. Ivan III, Prince
of Moscow, rolled back the Tatar invaders, following which the city became the
capital of the expanding Muscovite state. By the 15th century Moscow became the
capital of the Russian national state and, in 1547, Grand Duke Ivan IV became
the first to assume the title of Tsar. The Moscow Kremlin, which was built in
the beginning of the 15 century, is a benchmark of that epoch.
After the conquest of Siberia, the borders of Russia extended vastly, covering an immense territory and making it the biggest kingdom on earth in the 17th century. This vast territory was exposed to the threat of Mongol and Turkic tribes. These conditions created a suitable environment for the development and justification of the concept of “autocracy” in Russia. This feeling of “insecurity” led in Muscovite Russia to the development of a “military dictatorship”. The entire Russian nation consisted of serfs: the development of a privileged aristocracy and a class of self-governing burghers was impeded. The absence of private property and an independent nobility led to the complete concentration of power in the hands of Russia’s rulers.
The Birth of the
Conservative Ideology: Muscovy - The Third Rome
The
Orthodox religion played an important role in the rise of an extreme form of
autocracy in Muscovite Russia. Byzantine dogma perceived politics to be the
responsibility of the rulers and this helped the emergence in Russia of a form
of monarchy that in its powers exceeded anything known in the West even in the
age of absolutism.
When
Constantinople was conquered in 1453 by the Ottomans, Russia remained the only
rightful claimant to the status of Third Rome.[15]
This notion led to the development of the theory of Moscow - The Third Rome,
formulated apparently sometime in the 1530s by the monk Filofei (Philotheus)[16].
Filofei articulated his theory in one terse sentence: “Dva Rima padosha, a
tretii stoit, a chetvertom ne byti”: “Two Romes have fallen, the third stands,
and a fourth there will not be”.[17]
The responsibility of preserving the world’s cultural heritage was now on the
shoulders of Muscovy. Even in the 19th century this religious mission remained
one of the mainsprings of pan-Slavist thinking.
With
the preparation of the Book of Degrees of Royal Genealogy (Stepennaia kniga) by
Metropolitan Macarius[18]
in 1560-63, Ivan IV was presented as the legitimate heir of the Roman and
Byzantine emperors. With the support of the Church, the Russian rulers were now
endowed with unrestrained power and the Church itself came under the full
authority and control of the Tsars. The rulers of Moscow appointed its highest
dignitaries and removed them at will.
This
voluntary subordination of the Russian Church to the state led to the bureaucratization
of the clergy and spared Russia the kind of struggle between ecclesiastical and
secular authorities that had afflicted Catholic Europe through much of the Middle
Ages. The highly bureaucratized Russian Church also became hostile to all
independent religious thought and condemned all sorts of independent thinking.
Thus,
at the beginning of its new autonomous existence, Muscovy was given a sharp
thrust towards conservatism and an admonition to watch warily against
perverting influences from outside, especially from Western Europe.[19]
Peter the Great and the Westernization of
Russian Empire
In an
attempt to create a continental military power and a European Russia, Peter the
Great travelled to European cities. Hiding his identity, he worked as an
ordinary shipbuilder in Holland to learn new maritime technologies. Following
his return, he started an enforced adaptation process of European models of the
navy, military schools, law, and Table of Ranks (civil service), which he
believed to be necessary for Russia to become a modern European state. Peter’s
modernization of Russia from above also affected the language of the state. The
title of the ruler was changed from Tsar to Imperator.
Pioneering
the Westernization process, Peter dressed in Western clothes, shaved his beard,
and did not strictly follow the religious duties of the Orthodox Church. He
hated everything that Moscow symbolized: archaic culture, superstition,
religious fanaticism, and resentment of the West. The Petrine Revolution[20]
in Russian culture and politics created a contrast between Moscow and St
Petersburg. During Peter’s reign, the Russian state also formulated a new
geographical definition of Europe. Russian geographer Vasiliy Tatishchev,
commissioned by Peter, argued in the 1730s that the true natural border of
Europe stretched all the way to the Ural Mountains.
St Petersburg – Russia’s Window to Europe
It
was no coincidence that Peter’s window on the West, St Petersburg, was situated
on the Baltic. Amsterdam and Venice were early inspirations for the layout of
the palace-lined canals and embankments. Peter borrowed what he liked from
Europe’s capitals. The austere classical baroque style of Petersburg’s
churches, which set them apart from Moscow’s brightly colored onion domes, was
a mixture of St Paul’s cathedral in London, St Peter’s in Rome, and the
single-spired churches of Riga, in what is now Latvia.[21]
From an architectural perspective, St Petersburg’s main characteristic was a
perfect synthesis of the Italian and Russian baroque styles. The harmonious
network of avenues and squares, canals, and parks, which were mostly planned
and built by Italian architect Francesco Bartolomeo Rastrelli, gave an
architectural unity to the city.
The
important capitals of Europe like London, Paris, and Vienna were built in
several centuries with the accumulation of great heritage, tradition, and
culture, reflecting different styles of diverse periods. However, Petersburg was completed within only
fifty years and according to a single set of principles. Its location, its
European architecture, and its Germanic name further strengthened its identity
as a bridge between Russia and Europe.[22]
While the golden spire of the Admiralty became the topographical center of the
city, Falconet’s equestrian statute of Peter the Great, The Bronze Horseman,
became the “new emblem” of Russia’s destiny.
According
to Orlando Figes, St Petersburg was more than a city. It was a vast, almost
utopian project of cultural engineering to reconstruct the Russian as a
European man.[23]
For Dostoyevsky, it was the “most abstract and intentional city in the whole
round world”.[24]
In fact, every detail of the city was intentionally designed for the refusal of
“medieval Muscovy” and to compel Russians to adopt a more European way of life.
As Peter conceived it, to become a citizen of Petersburg was to leave behind
the “dark” and “backward” customs of the Russian past in Moscow and to enter,
as a European Russian, the modern Western world of progress and enlightenment.[25]
The
obsessive regulations introduced by Peter and the “obligatory imitation” of
European way of life gave St Petersburg the image of a hostile and oppressive
place. Criticism of St Petersburg started to play a central role in Russian
literature as a threat to the Russian way of life. This criticism was above all
seen in Gogol’s novels. Gogol’s Petersburg was a cold and cruel city with
lonely and haunted figures.[26]
In Dostoevsky’s novel Crime and
Punishment (1866), it was home of criminals and murderers like Raskolnikov.[27]
Rivalry between Moscow and St Petersburg: Westernization Versus Romantic Nationalism
St
Petersburg was intentionally built for the sole purpose of forcing the Russians
to adopt the European way of life. Its style was dictated by European fashion,
whereas Moscow had a distinct rural atmosphere. According to the Empress
Catherine, Moscow was a symbol of fanaticism while St Petersburg symbolized
progress and civilization. Moscow’s architectural character was defined largely
by the Russian provinces. Being located on the crossroads of Europe and the
Asiatic steppe, it had absorbed these diverse influences and created its own
distinctive style. The streets of Moscow reflected a mixture of oriental
customs, colors, and motifs.
The
poet Konstantin Batyushkov saw the city as a “bizarre mix” of East and West. In
the image of Moscow one could still make out the influence of Genghis Khan.
Moscow’s semi-oriental nature was given full expression in the so-called
neo-Byzantine style of architecture that dominated its reconstruction in the
1830s and 1840s. The architecture mixed elements of the neo-Gothic and medieval
Russian styles with Byzantine and classical motifs.[28]
While
St Petersburg symbolized Westernization, Moscow was a symbol of the historical
and cultural isolation of Russia from Europe. The Renaissance and the
Reformation that swept the whole of Europe did not have any influence on
Muscovy. It took no part in maritime discoveries or the scientific revolutions
of the early modern era. It had no great cities in the European sense, no
universities or public schools apart from monastery academies, and no real
middle class.
The
ideological confrontation between the Westernizers and the Slavophiles laid the
basis of the rivalry between Moscow and St Petersburg. For the Westernizers,
Petersburg was the symbol of their Europe-oriented ideas for Russia. The
Slavophiles, however, idealized Moscow, where the way of life was more
provincial and closer to the native habits of the Russian people. For them, the
customs and traditions of old Rus’ were embodied in Moscow, reflecting the real
Russian character.
Muscovy
was the religious center of Russia while St Petersburg symbolized a modern,
secular European state. Reflecting the spiritual traditions of the Eastern
Church, which went to Byzantium, Moscow resembled the medieval culture of
central Europe. The dominance of the church impeded the secular movements that
had taken shape in Europe with the Renaissance and Reformation. St Basil’s of
Red Square symbolized the triumphant restoration of the Orthodox traditions of
Byzantium and set in stone the imperial mission of Moscow as the capital of a
religious crusade, set out in the doctrine of Moscow as the Third Rome. The
double-headed eagle of the Byzantine emperors, which is currently the symbol of
Russia, was added by Moscow’s princes to their coat of arms.
Moscow
was a center of the Old Believers, who radically opposed all reforms in the
Russian Church. Moscow’s messianic destiny as the Third Rome and the last true
seat of Orthodoxy was the center of their faith. Living in enclosed
communities, they were hostile to the influences of the West or any innovation
from the outside world. They regarded Peter as the Antichrist, and thus St
Petersburg was considered by them as “the kingdom of the Devil”.
The Impact of the Napoleonic Wars and the
Decembrist Uprising
During
the reign of Catherine II, the influence of French culture on the upper class
of St Petersburg was felt even more strongly. However, everything changed with
the French Revolution. The bloodshed caused by the Jacobin reign of terror
following the revolution of 1789 created dismay among the Russian gentry, who had
believed in the supremacy of French culture and idealized the French way of life.
That belief that France was the center of civilization, progress, and
enlightenment soon faded away.
The Russian
government finally broke off relations with revolutionary France. Moscow’s
importance increased and its place as a symbol of everything “Russian in the
real sense” was further strengthened following the French revolution. When
Russia went to war with France in 1805, Moscow’s indisputable place as the
“heart of Russia” was confirmed.
A
circle known as the “Russian Tendency” engaged in a fight against French
cultural practices, claiming that the ancient cultural practices of the people
defined what was Russian and what was Russia. Following the defeat of Napoleon, Tsar Alexander I presented the “Holy
Alliance” as the new international order that was expected to emerge after the
Congress of Vienna in 1815.
At first, many officers were encouraged by Tsar Alexander’s early liberal reformation of Russian society and politics. However,
internal and external unrest, which the Tsar believed stemmed from political
liberalization, led to a series of repressions and a return to a government of
restriction and conservatism. During this period, defenders of autocracy and
nationalism dominated the public debate about Europe. However, Russian military officers that had served in the victorious
military campaign against Napoleon soon gathered to formulate an opposition
with the expectations of social and political change in Russia, which
constituted the core of Decembrists.
In 1816, several officers of the Imperial Russian Guard founded a society known as the Union of Salvation, or the
Faithful and True Sons of the Motherland. In 1821, the society decided to suspend activity, but two groups
continued to function secretly: a Southern Society, based in Tulchin and led by Pavel Pestel, and a Northern Society, based in St Petersburg
and led by Guard officers Nikita Muraviev, Prince S. P.
Trubetskoy, and Prince Eugene Obolensky.
The
Northern Society aimed to establish a British-style constitutional monarchy and
to abolish serfdom, whereas the
Southern Society had more radical targets such as abolishing the monarchy,
establishing a republic, and redistributing the land.
When Tsar Alexander I died on 1 December 1825, his heir, Constantine, removed himself from the
line of succession, and Nicholas stepped forward to assume the throne. With the
capital in temporary confusion, a group of officers commanding about 3,000 men
assembled in Senate Square on the morning of 26 December, where they refused to
swear allegiance to the new tsar, Nicholas I, proclaiming instead their loyalty to Constantine and the constitution.
They expected to be joined by the rest of the troops stationed in St Petersburg,
but they were disappointed. Following clashes with the loyal troops, the
Decembrist revolt came to an end.
Despite
its failure, the Decembrist movement was of key importance to the Russian
debate about Europe. It firmly established a constitutionalist position that was
to hover on the margins of the public discourse for the next eighty years. Even
more importantly, the state’s reaction to the Decembrist uprising redefined the
parameters of the debate and clearly indicated the constraints on political
action.[29]
Some
Russians perceived the Decembrist revolt as an example of how European ideas
could become a threat for Russia. Others considered it as proof of the gap that
was gradually opening between Europe and Russia. Another reaction was the
formulation of a new variant of “Russian Messianism”, as put forward by the
Wisdom-lovers (Lybomudrie). Some
Russians argued that Europe was superior to Russia in political and economic
fields and expected, as Ivan Kireevsky did, Russia to take steps to overcome
these differences.
The
most significant reaction to the Decembrist uprising came from Peter Chaadaev. In First
Philosophical Letter, he argued that the unity of Christendom (Civitas Dei)
was the main factor that made Europe blossom. In contrast to medieval Europe,
Chaadaev argued, Russia had made the mistake of following despicable Byzantium,
which was not part of the “universal brotherhood of man”. As a result, it had
become an easy prey to the Tartars. When the Tartars left, Russia could have
joined the European mainstream, but did not. For these reasons, he wrote,
Russia was now like a child born out of wedlock, with no real heritage. From
this, Chaadaev concluded that Russia had no past, no present, and no
future.[30]
Official Nationalism
In the 1830s and 1840s, during the
reign of Nicholas I, the Russian government, for the first and only time until
the Bolsheviks seized power, formulated an official ideology. This ideology,
later labeled Official Nationalism, was promulgated by an array of conservative
scholars and publicists with the support of the crown. It had some points in
common with the Slavophile doctrine, except that, while extolling Russia’s
unique virtues, it was not anti-Western: Peter the Great, anathema to the
Slavophiles, was the doctrine’s idol.[31]
The Official Nationality ideology
had its origins in a statement made in March 1832 by Count Sergei Uvarov (1786-1855)
to Nicholas I. His ideology was based on three concepts: orthodoxy, autocracy,
and nationality. Orthodoxy meant devotion to the Russian Orthodox Church and
the return to the spiritual roots of pre-Petrine Russia. The affirmation of the
principle of autocracy meant a return to the old Muscovite notion of autocracy
as the basic and permanent feature of Russian statehood. Finally, nationality
was interpreted by Uvarov as devotion to the Russian national heritage and the spiritual
make-up of the people, with a refusal to trust Western Europe as a model for
Russia or Western European theories as at all relevant for Russia.[32]
According to B. H. Sumner, Official
Nationalism was meant to serve as the preservative of Russia as a member of
true European civilization against the insidious ravages of false European
civilization as represented by the French revolution, liberalism, and
secularism. Sumner goes on to suggest that Uvarov did not condemn the West out
of hand, but only the Russian infatuation with the West and the failure to see
that there was a “true” Europe and a “false” Europe. His conclusion is that the
doctrine, like Tsarism in general, was an attempt to stand against new Europe
in the name of the old Europe of the Ancien
Régime.[33]
The ideology of Official Nationalism
prevailed as the official political doctrine until February 1917. The successor
of Nicolas I, Alexander II, was the only Tsar who did not strictly followed the
ideology. However, it was faithfully adhered to by the two last Emperors,
Alexander III and Nicholas II.
Slavophilism
The etymological meaning of
“Slavophilism” is “love of Slavs”. However, this term was used to define a
group of ideologists who formed a romantic and nationalist group of opposition
to the trend known as “Westernism” (Zapadnichestvo).
Slavophilism first emerged in Poland
in the very beginning of the 17th century. The earliest repercussions of this
ideology in Russia occurred in the 1820s among intellectual circles organized
by young idealists such as Vladimir Fyodorovich Odoyevsky. Poet Konstantin Batyushkov was the first to use the word “Slavophile” in an
ironic sense to denote a certain archetype. The ideology strongly appeared as a response to Peter
Chaadaev’s famous work First
Philosophical Letter, published in 1836. In his brief essays, Chaadaev raised
the question of Russia’s place in world history. During the 1830s, the Russian
debate on Europe polarized into two camps: the Romantic nationalists gathered
under the banner of “Slavophilism” and those who looked to Europe for political
and economic models became known as “Westernizers”. The discussion launched by Chaadaev
created a controversy between the Slavophiles and Westernizers that dominated
Russian political thought until modern times.
The
classical Slavophiles were a remarkably homogeneous group who were members of a
small number of noble families. The most outstanding thinkers of Slavophilism
were Ivan Kireevsky (1806-56), Aleksei Khomyakov (1804-60), Konstantin Aksakov
(1817-60), and Yury Samarin (1819-76). Other notable
Slavophiles included Alexander Koshelev, Dmitry Valuyev, Fyodor Chizhov, Ivan
Belyayev, Alexander Gilferding, Vladimir Lamansky, and Vladimir Cherkassky.
Writers Vladimir Dahl, Alexander Ostrovsky, Apollon Grigoryev, Fyodor Tyutchev,
and Nikolai Yazykov supported socio-ideological aspects of the Slavophile
doctrine. Historians and linguists Fyodor Buslayev, Osip Bodyansky, and Dmitry
Grigorovich were also supportive of the Slavophile concepts. Their intellectual home was Moscow,
where they had received their education. The Slavophiles
mostly gathered at the Yelagin, Sverbeyev, and Pavlov literary salons, debating
with the Westernizers there. They considered St Petersburg a symbol of the corruption of Russian
life by the hostile West.
Due to censorship, the Slavophiles did not have their own permanent
publications for a long time and mostly published their works in the Moskvityanin magazine. After censorship
was somewhat mitigated in the late 1850s, they started publishing the Russkaya Beseda (Russian Conversation)
and Selskoye Blagoustroistvo (Rural
Improvement) magazines and the Molva
(Common Talk) and Parus (Sail) newspapers.
The Slavophiles believed that the
true Eastern Orthodox faith borrowed by Rus’ predetermined the Russian nation’s
special historical mission. Eastern Orthodoxy was marked by Sobornost, the term for organic unity
and integration and the salient feature of Russian society’s life. The
innermost foundations of the Russian soul were formed by Orthodoxy and
traditional peasant communes. The Slavophiles idealized the Russian nation’s
patriarchal nature and the principles of traditionalism and perceived it in the
spirit of conservative romanticism. At the same time, they called on
intellectuals to merge with the people and to study their way of life, culture,
and language.
The central issue of the Slavophile
ideology was Russia’s relationship with Western Europe. According to the
Slavophiles, Russia’s exclusion from the Roman heritage was the essential
feature distinguishing it from Europe. Russia had been spared this fatal
heritage and was therefore established on purely Christian principles that were
in complete harmony with the spirit of the Slavic peasant commune. The West was
poisoned by shallow rationalism and racked by class antagonism, from which
Russia was saved by her Byzantine heritage and Slavic spirit.
The greatest difficulty faced by the
Slavophiles in their interpretation of Russian history was to find an adequate
explanation for the Petrine reforms. The Petrine reforms, according to the
Slavophiles, cut the links between the upper strata and the common people and
created an insurmountable gap between the people (narod) and the enlightened elite (obshchestvo) that had adopted Western ways. The return of the
enlightened sections of society to the folds of Orthodoxy and the “native
principles” preserved in the village commune seemed to offer the only hope of a
cure for Russia.[34]
The Slavophile ideology no doubt occupied
an important place in the process of the development of national identity and
nationalism in Russia. Its contribution to the awakening of self-awareness
among the Russian nation with its distinctions and individualities is
indisputable.
Slavophile
concepts were reflected in the philosophical doctrines advanced by Vladimir Solov’ev, Nikolai Berdyaev, Sergei Bulgakov, Lev Karsavin, and
Pavel Florensky in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The repercussions of the Slavophile
doctrine, in fact, can still be seen in contemporary Russia, where the long-lasting
debate about whether Russia is European or Eastern is increasingly lively.
Westernizers
The Westernizers were a group of Russian intellectuals who opposed
feudalism and the Slavophiles in the 1840s. Alexander Herzen, Timofei
Granovsky, Nikolai Ogaryov, Vasily Botkin, Nikolai Ketcher, Yevgeny Korsh,
Konstantin Kavelin, and some others formed the Moscow Westernizers group. Vissarion
Belinsky, who lived in St Petersburg, maintained close ties with this group.
Westernizers rejected feudalism and serfdom in economics, political life,
and culture, and they advocated Western-style socioeconomic reforms. Their
objective was to demonstrate how Russia was, in fact, already developing along
European lines and how it could accelerate this process. The Westernizers
deemed it possible to establish a bourgeois democratic system by peaceful
means. They believed that education and propaganda could forge Russian public
opinion and force the Tsar to launch bourgeois reforms. They also had a high
opinion of Peter the Great’s reforms.
The Westernizers called for overcoming Russia’s socioeconomic backwardness
on the basis of progressive European experience, rather than promoting unique
elements of national culture. They prioritized the common aspects of
Russian-Western historical and cultural destinies rather than mutual
disagreements.
One of the most prominent Westernizers, Belinsky argued that the evolution
of individuals as well as nations passes through three phases. The first phase
is one of natural immediacy. The second is one of abstract universalism of
reason. The third phase is characterized by rational reality, where the two first
tendencies are transcended and reconciled in a dialectical process. A group of
people during their first phase is a people (narod); only when it makes the transition to the second stage does
it become a nation (natsiya).
Belinsky, therefore, concluded that only with Peter and the influx of
universalistic European ideas were the people “raised to the level of society”,
allowing Russia to become a nation.[35]
The
main preoccupation of Westernism was to reconcile universalism and nationalism.
The political and economic models of Europe were superior to those of Russia
and, thus, history itself demanded that they be emulated. Before the Decembrist
uprising, the proposed model had been to formulate a constitution for Russia.
Following the uprising, the Westernizers believed that the course of history
would enforce the inevitable process of Europeanization.
In
the mid-1840s, the movement split into liberal and revolutionary democratic
wings. The liberal wing comprised Annenkov, Granovsky, Kavelin, and some others,
whereas the revolutionary democratic wing consisted of Herzen, Ogaryov, and
Belinsky. The two groups had different opinions on the methods of reform and
Russia’s post-reform development. The democrats advocated revolutionary
struggle and the construction of socialism.
The
views of the Westernizers paved the way for the Russian liberal thinkers of the
late 19th century and the early 20th century.
The Impact of the Crimean War: The Birth of Pan-Slavism, Liberalism, Russian Socialism, and Marxism
Russia,
as a member of the Holy Alliance, tried to
maintain the balance of power that had been established in the Treaty of Vienna in 1815. In 1848, the nationalist movements in a number of European states
reached a peak. The reaction of the Russian state to the nationalist ferment
was to rally to the side of Austria and to help the Habsburg ruler in
suppressing the Hungarian
Revolution of 1848.
The
policy of “expanding in a southerly direction toward the warm water ports” eventually
brought the Russian state into conflict with the Ukrainian Cossacks and then with the Crimean Tatars. When Russia conquered these groups and gained possession of Ukraine, the Ottoman Empire lost its buffer zone against Russian expansion and
Russia and the Ottoman Empire fell into direct conflict. The conflict with the
Ottoman Empire also presented a religious issue of importance, as Russia saw
itself as the protector of Orthodox Christians, many of whom lived under
Ottoman control. Russia wanted a free hand in settling its problems with the Ottoman
Empire, whom it considered as the “sick man of Europe”. Britain could not tolerate Russian dominance of Ottoman affairs as that
would challenge the British role in the eastern Mediterranean.
The
immediate chain of events led France and Britain to declare war on Russia on 27
and 28 March 1854. Its humiliating defeat in the Crimean War made the Russian
state reassess its framework for judging Europe. The Crimean War was a contributing factor in the Russian abolition
of serfdom in 1861. Tsar Alexander II
considered the military defeat of the Russian serf-army
by free troops from Britain and France as proof of the need for emancipation.
The Crimean War also led to the eventual recognition by the Russian government
of its technological inferiority, in military practices as well as weapons.
Before
the Crimean War, the position of the Russian state was aligned with Romantic
nationalism. Following its defeat, the Russian government, realizing the
importance of economic strength for military capabilities, made a number of
approaches in the direction of Westernism. The new thinking of the state
sparked some interesting new repositionings among the Romantic nationalists as
well as the Westernizers. Where the former were concerned, the military defeat
and the state’s loss of interest in Romantic nationalism initially made for a
period of inaction. Eventually, however, Slavophilism, which had favored
spiritual introspectiveness and Russian aloofness vis-à-vis Europe, gave way to
pan-Slavism.[36]
An echo of the pan-Slavic idea was first
seen in the manifesto of Peter the Great to the Balkan Slavs, issued during his
war against the Ottoman Empire. The first significant group of adherents to the
ideology of pan-Slavism was one of the Decembrists organizations, the Society
of United Slavs. After the failure of the Decembrists, the pan-Slavic idea was
picked up by the conservative Mikhail Petrovich Pogodin. He became the chairman
of the main pan-Slavic organization, the Moscow Slavic Benevolent Society.[37]
Unlike the Slavophiles, the pan-Slavic
group was rather loose and heterogeneous. The group assumed a pivotal role in
championing the cause of Balkan Slavs during the Balkan wars of 1875-78. During
those years, the influence of the pan-Slavic group reached its climax and
gained considerable public support. Finally, the liberation of the southern
Slavs from Turkish rule was accepted by the government as an official policy by
Alexander II.
Nikolai Yakovlevich Danilevsky was an
advocate of a more extreme sort of pan-Slavism.
According to him, Slavs had the potential to produce a great
civilization similar to that of the West. He argued that under the direction of
Russia, the Slavs must seize Constantinople, reassume the role of Byzantium,
and build an imperishable empire. However, in order to realize this aim, the
Slavs had to liberate themselves from their German and Turkish rulers and join
Russia.
Against Danilevsky’s program, the
philosopher Konstantin Leontiev wanted an alliance between Islam and Orthodoxy
against the liberal ferment of dissolution from the West. He opposed all
conflicts between Russians and Ottomans in the Balkans. The enemy was above all
Anglo-Saxon. Leontiev’s vision still appeals to many Russians today. It was
only by the mid-1870s, when the developments in the Balkans entered the Russian
agenda, that the pan-Slavic ideology based on the superiority of the Slavs and
the utopian notion of bringing them together emerged as an important factor in
the debate about Europe.
The defeat
in the Crimean War convinced the state that the Westernizers had been right in
their cause. Restrictions that had been inflicted in the wake of the 1848
revolutions were lifted. Tsar Alexander abolished serfdom in 1861. In 1864,
organs of local government, the zemstva, were introduced. These steps towards
Westernization created higher expectations of reform among the Westernizers.
However, when the reforms proved half-hearted in both conception and
implementation, the position of the Westernizers radicalized, splitting into
three positions: liberal, Russian Socialist, and Marxist.
Traditional
Westernizers who believed in constitutionalism gathered around the liberal
position. Socialists believed that Russia had to pick and choose from Europe’s
experience in order to arrive at a specifically Russian socialism. This group was
no longer referred to as Westernizers. Instead, they formed a new position of
Russian socialism that, in the course of the 1860s, was further radicalized
into a populist position. The leader of the socialists, Alexander Herzen,
maintained that the transition to socialism could be made without going through
a capitalist stage. Finally, other
socialists argued that Russia had to pass through the same developmental stages
that Europe had passed through, which would end with a socialist revolution.
Throughout the 1870s, the Marxist position grew stronger and stronger.[38]
A
number of intellectuals idealized the Russian village commune and no longer
referred to themselves as “Russian socialists” but rather as populists. The
populists introduced the life of the Russian peasant as a model for Russian
development and criticized the individualism of Europe. According to Walicki,
classical populism was not only a reaction to the development of capitalism in
Russia but also (and especially at the beginning) a response of the democratic
Russian intelligentsia to the capitalism and socialism of the West; after all,
it was a traditional preoccupation of the Russian intellectuals to ponder
Russia’s future in terms of the desirability or undesirability of following the
example of Western Europe.[39]
Assassination of Tsar Alexander II and Its Aftermath
In
the beginning of the 1880s, populists took the lead in the debate about Europe,
marginalizing the Romantic nationalists and the Marxists. They considered the
elimination of Tsar Alexander II as a crucial step in facilitating the introduction
of capitalism in Russia. After escaping unharmed from numerous attempts of
assassination, the Tsar was finally killed on 13 March 1881 in St Petersburg by
a group of populist commandos.
Alexander II’s death caused a great setback for the reform movement. One of
his last ideas was to draft plans for an elected parliament, or Duma, which were completed the day before he died but not yet released to the
Russian people. In a matter of 48 hours, Alexander II had planned to release
his plan for the Duma to the Russian people.
The
assassination of Tsar Alexander placed Alexander III on the throne. The first
reaction of Alexander III was to tighten censorship. His reign was marked by
extreme measures of oppression introduced by the state. Civil liberties were
suppressed and police brutality became a daily exercise. In particular, the
Okhrana, which was widely used by Alexander III, employed brutal methods in
order to identify and eliminate suspected rebels and protestors.
Following
the ascent of Alexander III to the throne, the populists became both
demoralized and marginalized from the debate. The position of the Romantic
nationalists was no longer unequivocally pan-Slavic, but now branched into a
plethora of proposals for how Russia should go about its relations with Europe.
Vladimir Solov’ev’s spiritual outlook, with its emphasis on Russo-European
partnership where the Russians were to play a guiding role, came to dominate
the Romantic nationalist position in the last years of this period.[40]
In
1894, Alexander II died and Nicholas II became the new Tsar. During the 1890s,
the Marxist position took center stage in the Russian debate about Europe. In
1903, a split took place in the Marxist position. The discussion was about whether
the Social Democratic Workers’ Party should be organized along the lines
already realized by European social democracy or whether it should be turned
into a tightly disciplined party of a new type. The Mensheviks, who took up the
former position, saw the Russian bourgeoisie as a revolutionary class. In order
to topple tsarist autocracy, the proletariat should therefore make a tactical
class alliance with it. Russian Marxists, they held,
should copy what had happened in Western Europe in the latter half of the
nineteenth century and try to gather as many progressive forces as possible
within a mass party. In organizational as well as in political work, European
social democracy was an indispensable source of inspiration and support.[41]
Lenin’s
“party of a new type” was a new concept in the sense that it was different from
the European-style party that the Mensheviks wanted. The most severe critique of
the new party came from Lev Trotsky, who argued that the logic of
“centralization” introduced by Lenin would inevitably lead to the establishment
of a central committee that would be headed by a dictator. Trotsky, in an
attempt to strengthen his argument against Lenin’s new concept, pointed to the
experience of the French revolution. The rivalry between the “Asiatic
Bolsheviks” and the “European Mensheviks” would be a dominant theme in the
Marxist debate in the years to come.
The
year of 1905 was marked by dramatic sociopolitical changes in Russia that affected
the debate about Europe. The Russo-Japanese war was continuing and there was
considerable unrest in the capital. The “Bloody Sunday”[42] of January 1905 triggered
a strike movement that spread throughout the country. Perhaps the most significant effect of Bloody Sunday was the drastic
change in the attitude of the Russian peasants and workers. Previously, the Tsar
had been considered as the father of the people. However, after Bloody Sunday,
the Tsar was held personally responsible for the tragedy that occurred. The
social contract between the Tsar and the people was broken, which delegitimized
the position of the Tsar and his divine right to rule.
Tsar Nicholas II, in an
attempt to appease the people, allowed the setting up of a Duma with limited
powers. With this step, the Tsarist state came closer to the liberal position; however,
the autocracy eventually resorted to force near the end of 1905 in order to
curtail the strike movement that continued to spread. The new rapport between
the state and the liberals after 1905 marginalized the Romantic nationalists
from the debate, much as had happened after the Crimean War. Similar to what
happened in 1856-63, in the years from 1905 to 1909 the Romantic nationalist position
underwent a transformation. The whole position was lifted away from
Pan-Slavism, towards the spiritual outlook of Solov’ev.
October Revolution and the Impact of the Communist Rule
The outbreak of war in August 1914 created an atmosphere of patriotism
serving to ease the social and political protests and focus hostilities against
a common external enemy. In the first months of the war, the patriotic
sentiments helped the Romantic nationalists to dominate the public debate. However,
the defeats on the front soon swept away the atmosphere of optimism and the “patriotic
unity” did not last long. As discontent grew, the Duma issued a warning
to Nicholas in November 1916 stating that there was an urgent need for a
constitutional form of government. Nicholas ignored the demands. The
masses revolted against the Tsarist autocracy and the Russian capital fell into
a state of chaos. The February Revolution of 1917 ended the Russian Empire and the Romanov dynasty.
The
liberal bloc immediately moved forward, forcing the Duma to establish a
Temporary Committee. Tsar Nicholas[43] abdicated the throne on
15 March. On 16 March a Provisional Government under Prince Gregory Lvov was established in the form of an alliance between
liberals and socialists who wanted political reform. The socialists soon formed the Petrograd Soviet to compete with
the Provisional Government for power over Russia.
The
most troublesome rival of the Provisional Government was the Bolshevik Party,
led by Vladimir Lenin. Lenin, who had
been living in exile in Switzerland, perceived the ongoing turmoil as an
opportunity for his Marxist revolution. With the arrival of Lenin in Petrograd
in April 1917, the popularity of the Bolsheviks increased
steadily. The Bolshevik Central Committee drafted a resolution calling for the
dissolution of the Provisional Government in favor of the Petrograd Soviet and
the October Revolution began. On 7 November 1917, Bolshevik revolt ended the phase of the
revolution instigated in February, replacing Russia’s short-lived provisional
parliamentary government with the government of the Bolsheviks.
It
soon became clear that the Bolsheviks had little support outside of the
industrialized areas of Saint Petersburg and Moscow. The domestic tension
steadily increased, causing anti-Bolshevik revolts such as the Tambov rebellion of 1919-21 and
the Kronstadt rebellion of March 1921. These movements were eventually defeated along with the
White Army during the Civil War.
Lenin
attempted to transform Russia socially, economically, and politically. The
Bolsheviks took steps towards the introduction of a centralized state structure
imposing ever-growing restrictions and curtailing the freedom of Russian citizens.
According to Grigori Petrovich Maximov, the despotic character of state
communism converted the country into an immense prison and set Russia back to
the times of feudalism and serfdom. He further argues that all that was gained
through long centuries of bitter struggle and great sacrifices with church,
feudalism, serfdom, absolutism, and state democracy was destroyed by Marxist
state communism.[44]
The
Bolsheviks, who strongly criticized the restrictions on political freedom
during the Tsarist era, introduced a state control mechanism that went far
beyond than that of the Tsars. There were many similarities between the Tsarist
and the Communist states in terms of state control and suppression of political
freedoms. Politically, Russia remained an autocracy, with a Communist dictator
replacing an imperialist Tsar.
As a
natural consequence of Communist suppression, liberal and social democratic
positions were forced out of the debate. The Romantic nationalist position,
however, was able to continue its existence in a different form: Eurasianism.
In the 1920s, the major debate within the Bolshevik position was between
integrationists and isolationists.
Joseph Stalin took control of the party after Lenin’s
death. He drastically departed from Lenin’s policies and practices and put his
personal imprint on the system that bears his name. Stalinist industrialization
and collectivization policies generated devastating consequences, especially
for the peasantry and the working masses. By late 1934, Stalin had eliminated all likely potential opposition to
his leadership and was the unchallenged leader of both party and state. Given
the lack of complete data, it is difficult to establish the total loss of life
brought about by the Stalinist terror. An average estimate is that in the
Soviet Union as a whole, about 500,000 were executed in 1937-39 and somewhere
between 3 and 12 million were sent to labor camps (the Gulag), where nearly
half of them died.
During
the Second World War, the Russian debate about Europe was suspended to make way
for debates about wartime allies and fascism. In the early post-war years,
public political space reverted to its interwar shape, as did the state’s
position on Europe, with nationalist sentiment serving to underline the moral
superiority of Russia over Europe even further. Europe’s position as the
supreme “Other”, however, was seriously challenged by the imposing role of the
United States in the international system.[45]
Following
the death of Stalin, Khrushchev, the new Secretary General of the Communist
Party, started the process of de-Stalinization, which enabled the expansion of
public political space. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, an interest in Western
Europe arose due to the foundation of the European Economic Community and the European
Atomic Energy Community. Both organizations were considered by the USSR as
“products of capitalism’s mustering of forces against socialism”. According to the
Soviet leadership, the creation of an integrated Europe was a useless attempt
to counterweight Soviet Russia. With the fall of Khrushchev, the
de-Stalinization process came to an end. Public political space was not
expanded any further.
In
the 1970s, it was the great Russian novelist and
historian Alexander Isaevich Solzhenitsyn (1918-2008)
who set his seal on the debate about Europe. Strongly criticizing Soviet totalitarianism, Solzhenitsyn helped to raise global awareness of the
Gulag and
the Soviet Union’s forced labor camp system. He was awarded the Nobel
Prize in Literature in 1970 but was
expelled from the Soviet Union in 1974. He could return to Russia only in 1994, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Solzhenitsyn and his followers brought the Romantic
nationalist position back into the debate about Europe. Solzhenitsyn and his
associates often called for a relationship with the West based on isolation and
also called for a cultural war with the West, albeit in less absolute terms.[46]
In
1980, the nationalist position was enriched by yet another suggestion on how to
relate to Europe. Academician Dmitry Likhachev used Russia’s differences from
Europe as a point of departure for delineating the national character. His
importance to the Russian debate about Europe lay in his addition of pluralism to
the Romantic nationalist position.[47]
Another important figure in the debate about Europe in the 1980s was Andrei Sakharov,
who reinserted views into the debate that had been absent for five decades.
Sakharov insisted on Russia’s Europeanness, in contrast to his Romantic
nationalist opponents and Western skeptics. The coining of the phrase “Western
Slavophilism” to denote both Western European exclusivism and Russian nationalism
neatly sums up Sakharov’s own stance.[48]
Sakharov’s writings played an important role in the reintroduction of liberal Westernizing
ideas into the debate about Europe. However, they proved ineffective to trigger
the reemergence of a full-fledged liberal Westernizing position.
Perestroika and Afterwards
Following
Gorbachev’s ascent to power in 1985, the state’s general approach to the
capitalist West changed. By declaring 1987 “The Year of Europe”, the Soviet
state carried the theme of Europe to the center of Soviet foreign policy. The
aim of the Soviet state under Gorbachev’s leadership was to reform the Bolshevik
position, not to abolish it. However, the liberals started exerting pressure on
the state to take further steps towards a more decisive Westernization process.
The Romantic nationalist position, on the other hand, argued that perestroika was
an anti-Russian phenomenon and started pressing in the opposite direction.
When
the Soviet Union collapsed at the end of 1991, the Russian state under Boris Yeltsin took up
an undiluted liberal position. The new priority of the state became integration
with Europe as soon as possible. The Yeltsin regime, passed through three important stages. The first
stage ended in 1993 as the former parliament was terminated and a new
constitution was adopted. During that period of reconstructing the old
political institutions and forming a new Russian state, Yeltsin’s regime could
be described as a “delegative democracy”. A struggle was witnessed between the charismatic
Yeltsin and the Supreme Soviet and the Congress of People’s Deputies, which
resolutely opposed Yeltsin’s course. Under these conditions, Yeltsin was forced
to make very serious concessions to political and business elites in order to
stand against his opponents.
After President Yeltsin crushed the Supreme Soviet, his
regime entered the second stage in the confrontation. This was characterized by
the president’s loss of charisma and mobilization potential. During that
period, the officials in the top echelons of power began a large-scale process
of transferring state property into select private hands. The decentralization
of power, together with the state’s loss of central authority, created an
illusion of democracy. By the 1996 presidential election, when Yeltsin ran for
his second term, Russia still had decentralized power, weak institutions, and a
leader who had totally lost the support of the public.[49]
The third stage of Yeltsin’s regime started after he won
the 1996 election. The regime was then totally degraded and the Russian state
completely lost its central authority. There occurred the privatization of
state institutions by oligarchs, as well as the privatization of the Cabinet,
the president’s administration, and the president himself – or rather the
president’s family. To retain his personal power under such a regime, the
president used his powers to redistribute property and prevent a transfer of
power to the Cabinet.[50]
The
situation of economic and social chaos and the swift decay in social values and
traditions during Yeltsin’s period strengthened the nationalist tendencies,
enabling the Romantic nationalist position to make itself ever more strongly felt in the debate. According to Cherny, the most important factor that fuelled
nationalism in Russia was the anti-Russian nationalism that appeared in
ex-Soviet republics like Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, and Georgia and in some
newly emerged independent states in Central Asia. Anti-Russian acts in
ex-Soviet republics had a fuelling effect on the strengthening of the Romantic
nationalist position and neo-imperial tendencies in Russia.[51]
The optimism about a swift integration with Europe soon faded away. The
state’s position shifted in the direction of advocating good foreign relations with
the periphery of Russia, thus balancing the focus on Europe with a more
Eurasian one. The theme of Eurasia soon became central in the debate about
Europe. The term “Eurasia” was first used by Western
geographers in the 19th century. When the term entered the Russian intellectual
discourse, however, it acquired a new cultural and geopolitical meaning. The
Russian interpretation of Eurasianism was actually a manifestation of late
Tsarist Russia’s imperial ambitions. According to the Eurasianists, Russia is
not an eastern part of Europe but rather a continent in itself, which occupies
the center of the Eurasian “heartland”, extending from Moscow to the Urals and
the Urals to the Trans-Baikal. This vast and inaccessible “heartland” should be
under the control of Russia, including Central Asia and the Caucasus. Eurasianism,
albeit implicitly present in Soviet ideology, had never become official
ideology. However, the “sanctuarization” of the Soviet “heartland” had been the
semi-official ideology of the Red Army from Stalin to Brezhnev. Gorbachev and
Yeltsin, therefore, were the targets of Eurasianists who opposed the Russian
withdrawal from the Eastern European, Ukrainian, Baltic, and Central Asian realms
of this “heartland.”
Famous Russian philosopher, historian, and anthropologist
Lev Gumilev (1912-92) was the leading figure whose ideas gave inspiration to
the Eurasianists. Gumilev developed a theory in which he regarded the Russians
as a “super-ethnos”, kindred to the Turkic peoples of the Eurasian steppe. This
common heritage bound Russians with the nations of Central Asia and necessitated
them to develop solidarity against the destructive influences of the West.
According to Gumilev, the new Russia must respect the principle of ethnic
pluralism and should consider the nations of its periphery as potential allies
against Western influences.
Today, the heritage of Gumilev is cherished not only by leading national-patriotic writers and journalists but also by politicians, bureaucrats, military officials, and the Russian intelligentsia. Alexander Dugin is perhaps the best known follower of Gumilev. Considered to be the most popular ideologist of Russian expansionism and nationalism, Dugin has played a leading role in the foundation of the Eurasia Party. His political activities are focused on the restoration of the Russian Empire in the Eurasian sphere. This, according to Dugin, should be done through separation of the former Soviet republics, such as Georgia and Ukraine, and the Russian-speaking territories in these countries, especially Eastern Ukraine and Crimea, should be unified with Russia.
Following
the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Romantic nationalist position further
fragmented from a populist-Slavophile pole to an
extremist xenophobic pole. The collapse especially broadened the appeal of a xenophobic
wing that considered the Russian liberals as collaborators that served the
Western aims to split apart the Motherland. The
ethnic nationalists are the representatives of an extreme right in Russia,
whose goal is to achieve “ethnic purity” of Russia based on Slavic origins.
They are extremely racist, xenophobic, and populist. They advocate the
deployment of all people of non-Slavic origin, especially people from the
Caucasus, whom they consider the reason for increases in crime and public disorder.
They are anti-Semitic and loyal defenders of the slogan “Russia for Russians”.
Today Russian nationalist intellectuals are mostly gathered around the literary
journal Nash Sovremennik, a
periodical with nationalistic and patriotic content. The articles published vary
from a neo-Orthodox, conservative, neo-nationalist approach to xenophobic and
racist ideologies.
The
communists, who found themselves without a position in the debate, soon took up
the Romantic nationalist banner. Their new position now acquired a new name:
National Communists. Despite its declining popularity,
especially among the youth, the National Communist movement is still a force in
Russian politics. The National Communists dream of the continuation of the
Soviet state. However, they are also aware of the reality that the traditional communist
ideology no longer exists in Russia. The leading figure representing the National
Communist ideology is Gennady Zyuganov, the First Secretary of the Communist
Party since 1993. The political propaganda of Zyuganov’s Communist Party mainly
focuses on the decline in living standards following the collapse of Soviet
socialism. The Communist Party is also a strong opponent of the newly emerged
Russian oligarchy, which controls most of the economic assets of the country.
According to Zyuganov, increase in violent crime and ethnic demands for
autonomy are all consequences of the disappearance of socialism. Thus, the
Communist Party advocates a new sort of “socialism” based on a strong central
government guaranteeing the personal and economic security of Russians.
Zyuganov has been successful in combining his socialist ideology with Russian nationalism and his Communist Party allied with numerous other
left-wing and right-wing nationalist forces, forming a common
“national-patriotic alliance”.[52]
Another
wing that emerged from the Romantic nationalist position was the
neo-Slavophiles. The neo-Slavophiles are considered
as the supporters of the theses of Russian novelist and historian Alexander Solzhenitsyn.
Solzhenitsyn directed strong criticism against the newly emerged oligarchic
classes of post-Soviet Russia. Meanwhile, he was an opponent of any sort of
nostalgia for Soviet Communism. Opposing all sorts of extremist nationalism, he
defended a new and moderate patriotism. In his great work Rebuilding Russia: Reflections
and Tentative Proposals, Solzhenitsyn argued that Russia has to abandon the
burden of all non-Slav republics, which he claimed were slowing development and
weakening the Russian nation. The Nobel Literature Prize recipient recommended
the creation of a federation of three Slavic nations, namely Russia, Ukraine,
and Belarus.
In early
1998, Alexander Prokhanov referred to two pillars of contemporary Russian
thought: one “leftist”, of Western-liberal orientation, and the other
“rightist”, representing traditional Russian values, leading back to the
“pre-socialist world” and the “Russian idea”.
Putinism and the Current Debate on Europe and Westernization
Putin started his first term in office
after he won the presidential elections in the year 2000. The regime inherited
by Putin was totally decentralized; the state had lost central authority, while
oligarchs robbed the country and controlled its power institutions. In order to
mend this situation, Putin began to build a hierarchy of power. He destroyed
the political influence of oligarchs and oligopolies in the federal center. He
also ended the omnipotence of the regional elites. Putin’s attempts to restore
central authority by taking control of the financial, administrative, and media
resources of the state faced fierce resistance from the liberals. These efforts
were interpreted as the strengthening of authoritarian and totalitarian trends.
Toward the end of his first term, Putin was able to consolidate his political
regime, restoring the effectiveness and control of the state over its
resources.
Since
the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian academics, policy-makers,
philosophers, and bureaucrats have struggled to develop a new concept that
could play a guiding role in building a new and powerful Russia reminiscent of
the imperial past. The sharp turn of Putin’s state towards nationalism and
authoritarianism symbolized the victory of the Romantic nationalist position over
the liberal position that advocated the integration of Russia with Europe as
swiftly as possible.
Nationalism”, which was introduced by Nicholas I in the 1830s as an official
ideology, has surprisingly common features with Putin’s state nationalism. The
ideology of Official Nationalism was based on three concepts: orthodoxy,
autocracy, and nationality. The repercussions of these three concepts are
visible in Putin’s interpretation of state nationalism. The Putin
administration has the open support of the Orthodox Church and there has been
an apparent revival of orthodoxy in politics since the beginning of Putin’s
presidency. Autocracy is another undeniable aspect of Putin’s government. Russia
has witnessed a sharp autocratic turn with Putin’s immense centralization of
power. Nationality, albeit not in a discriminative character, is another
concept of state nationalism under Putin.
The nationalist ideology of the Putin administration can be
defined as a “Neo-Official Nationalism”, reminiscent of the days of Nicholas I.
This Neo-Official Nationalism is based on Orthodoxy, autocracy, and national
pride and is strengthened by a Eurasianist and, to a
certain extent, Slavophile influence. An emphasis on national pride and
national identity is often heard in Putin’s speeches.
Putin’s Neo-Official Nationalism cannot be put into the
category of classic Slavophile ideology, which cherished the Slavic peasant
commune and was very antagonistic to the West. Russia under Putin’s government,
despite being cautious in its relations with the West, has never adopted an
openly hostile stance towards Western powers as the Slavophiles did. A limited
influence of neo-Slavophile ideology, however, can be seen in the policies of
Putin. Protection and development of the national character of the Russian
Orthodox Church and attempts to avert the departure of two Slavic countries,
namely Ukraine and Belarus, from the orbit of Moscow can be interpreted as
factors reflecting the neo-Slavophile character of Putin’s Neo-Official
Nationalism. In 2007, Putin granted Solzhenitsyn, the hero of the neo-Slavophiles,
a state award for humanitarian achievement, which explicitly demonstrated his
sympathy to this ideology. The recent
annexation of Crimea to the “Motherland” has been yet another victory of
Putin’s nationalist policies, which has further consolidated the strength and
dominance of the Romantic nationalist position in the public political debate.
Putin, by publicly praising Lev Gumilev, founder of the modern
Eurasianist movement, demonstrated his belief in the Eurasianist ideology. The
consolidation of Russia’s influence in the near neighborhood through regional
organizations such as the Commonwealth of Independent States, Organization of
Central Asian Cooperation, Eurasian Economic Community, and Collective Security
Treaty Organization also confirmed Putin’s Eurasianist discourse. It seems
clear that the Eurasianist influence remains strong, if not predominant, to this
day within the Russian policy-making establishment. Nevertheless, it would also
be wrong to claim that the Putin administration is guided entirely by
Eurasianist thinking.
Looking into the future, it should not be difficult to
predict that Russia will continue to walk its current path. Putin, already in
his third term as president, will rule the country until the presidential
elections of 2018. He has already hinted that he will use his constitutional
right to run in the presidential elections in 2018 for the second time. It is
very unlikely to see a strong candidate to compete with Putin, given his
immense power, authority, and popularity, which was further increased and
consolidated following the crisis in Ukraine and the annexation of Crimea to
Russia. Taking into consideration the weakness of democratic institutions and
the lack of social pressure, it is easy to foresee that democratic reforms can
only be initiated from the top in Russia. Therefore, it is not difficult to
foresee that the Romantic nationalist position would preserve its dominance in
the public debate about whether or not Russia should be integrated with the
Western world. There are claims that the Kremlin’s real strategy is to bring
democracy in the long term, once political and economic stability is ensured.
However, with autocratic institutions becoming deeply embedded in the Russian
political system, the creation of a fully democratic system in Russia is
unlikely to happen in the coming decades. Thus, the liberal position, which advocates
for democratization and integration with the Western world, will have to wait
for its time to come, and that time is not visible in the foreseeable future.
[1]Peter J. S. Duncan, Contemporary Russian Identity Between East and West, The
Historical Journal, Volume 48, Number 1, Cambridge University Press, United
Kingdom, 2005, p. 277.
[2]James H. Billington, Russia: In Search of Itself,
Baltimore, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004, p. 12.
[3]Ana Siljak, Between East and West:
Hegel and the Origins of the Russian Dilemma, Journal of the History of Ideas, Volume 62, Number 2, April 2001, pp. 335-358.
[4]Robert Steuckers, Foundations of Russian Nationalism, 20 June
2010, http://www.eurorus.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6604%3Afoundations-of-russian-nationalism&catid=3%3Aanalysis&Itemid=92&lang=en.
[5]Kievan Rus’ (Russian: Ки́евская Русь) is the name used by Russian historian Nikolai Karamzin for the medieval state of Rus’. The state existed from approximately 880 to sometime in the middle of the 13th century when it disintegrated. It was founded by East Slavic tribes and Scandinavian traders (Varangians) called Rus’ and centered in Novgorod. The state later included territories stretching south to the Black Sea, east to the Volga, and west to the Kingdom of Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
[6]See Сергей Михайлович Соловьев, История России с древнейших времен, Publisher: Oleg E. Kolesnikov, Русская история в Библиотеке Магистра, http://www.lib.ru/HISTORY/SOLOVIEV/solv01.txtl
[7]Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural
History of Russia, Picador, New York, 2002, p. 62.
[8]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, p. 65.
[9]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, p. 66.
[10]They are often referred to as Decembrists.
[11]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, p. 86.
[12]The European
revolutions of 1848, known in some countries as the Spring of Nations, Springtime of the Peoples, or Year of Revolution, were a series of political upheavals throughout Europe in 1848. It remains the most widespread revolutionary wave in European
history, but within a
year, reactionary forces had regained control and the
revolutions collapsed.
[13]Iver B. Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and
International Relations, Routledge, New York, 2003, p. xiii.
[14]Иван Забелин, Основание Города и Бояарние Кучке 1153 год., в Марина Федотова, Кирил Королев, Москва- История Города От Участников и Очевидцев, Автобиография, Москва, 2010, p. 24.
[15]The first to claim their capital as the heir of
Byzantium were the Bulgarians, who as early as the 14th century designated the
capital of their empire, Tyrnovo (Tirnova), as the “New Rome”. This claim lapsed
in 1393 when Tyrnovo fell to the Turks.
[16]Старец Филофей, Иван Забелин, Москва - Третый
Рим и Семь Московских Холмов 1500-е годы в Марина Федотова, Кирил Королев, Москва - История Города от Участников и Очевидцев, Автобиография, Москва, 2010, p. 88.
[17]Pipes, Russian Conservatism and Its Critics: A
Study in Political Culture, p. 39.
[18]Macarius served as the Metropolitan of Moscow and All Russia from 1542 until 1563.
[19]Thornton Anderson, Russian Political Thought: An Introduction, Cornell University Press, New York, 1967, p. 74.
[20]See
details in James Cracraft, The Petrine Revolution in Russian Culture, London,
2004.
[21]Orlando Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural
History of Russia, New York, 2002, pp. 7-8.
[22]Alexander M. Martin, Romantics, Reformers, Reactionaries:
Russian Conservative Thought and Politics in the Reign of Alexander I, Northern
Illinois University Press, DeKalb,
1997, pp. 57-58.
[23]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, p. 10.
[24]Федор Михайлович Достоевский, Записки
из подполья, 1854,
http://az.lib.ru/d/dostoewskij_f_m/text_0290.shtml.
[25]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, p. 10.
[26]Николай
Васильевич Гоголь, Петербургские повести (Невский проспект, Нос, Портрет, Шинель, Записки сумасшедшего, Из ранних редакций), http://az.lib.ru/g/gogolx_n_w/.
[27]Федор Михайлович Достоевский, Преступление и наказание 1866,
http://az.lib.ru/d/dostoewskij_f_m/text_0060.shtml
[28]Figes, Natasha’s Dance: A Cultural History of Russia, p. 154.
[29]Aleksander Gerschenkron, Economic Development in Russian Intellectual History
of the Nineteenth Century, in Gerschenkron (ed.), Economic
Backwardness in Historical Perspective: A Book of Essays, Harvard University
Press, Cambridge, 1962, p. 164.
[30]Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International
Relations, p. 24.
[31]Richard Pipes, Russian Conservatism and Its Critics:
A Study in Political Culture, Yale University Press, New Haven and London,
2005, p. 98.
[32]Sergei Vasilievich Utechin, Russian Political Thought, London, 1963, p. 72.
[33]Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International
Relations, p. 24.
[34]Andrzej Walicki, A History of
Russian Thought From the Enlightenment to Marxism, Stanford University Press,
Stanford, 1979, pp. 98-99.
[35]Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International
Relations, pp. 35-36.
[36]Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International
Relations, pp. 40-41.
[37]Sergei
Vasilievich Utechin, Russian Political Thought, London, 1963, p. 85.
[38]Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International
Relations, pp. 41-47.
[39]Andrzej Walicki, The Controversy over Capitalism: Studies in the Social Philosophy of the Russian Populists, Clarendon, Oxford, 1969, p. 13.
[40]Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International
Relations, p. 91.
[41]Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International
Relations, pp. 92-93.
[42]“The Association of Russian Factory and Plant Workers”, which was headed by Father Georgii Apollonovich Gapon, a Russian priest who was concerned about the conditions experienced by the working and lower classes, drafted a petition on 19 January 1905 that called for improved working conditions, fairer wages, and a reduction of the working day to eight hours. Other demands included an end to the Russo-Japanese War and the introduction of universal suffrage. On the morning of Sunday, 22 January 1905, striking workers began to gather in the industrial outskirts of St Petersburg and proceeded towards the Winter Palace, the Tsar’s official residence. The crowd, whose mood was quiet, did not know that the Tsar was not there. The imperial guards opened fire into the crowd, killing more than 100 people and wounding more than 300. Although the Tsar was not at the Winter Palace and did not give the order for the troops to fire, he was widely blamed for the inefficiency and callousness with which the crisis had been handled. The killing of people, many of whom had seen the Tsar as their ‘Father’, resulted in a surge of bitterness towards Nicholas and his autocratic rule. A widely quoted reaction was that “we no longer have a Tsar”.
[43]In March 1917, the Provisional Government placed
Nicholas and his family under house arrest in the Alexander
Palace at Tsarskoe Selo, 24 km south of Petrograd. In August 1917 the family
was evacuated to Tobolsk in the Urals.
After the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917, ideas of putting Nicholas
on trial increased. As the counter-revolutionary White movement gathered force,
leading to full-scale civil war by the summer, the Romanovs were moved during
April and May 1918 to Yekaterinburg, a militant Bolshevik stronghold. During the early
morning of 16 July, at approximately 01:30, Nicholas, Alexandra, their
children, their physician, and several servants were taken to the basement and
killed. According to Edvard Radzinsky and Dmitrii Volkogonov, the order came
directly from Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov in Moscow. That the order came
from the top has long been believed, although there is a lack of hard evidence.
Radzinsky noted that Lenin’s bodyguard personally delivered the telegram
ordering the execution and that he was ordered to destroy the evidence.
[44]Grigori Petrovitch Maximov, Bolshevism: Promises and Reality, Chicago, 2011, p. 10.
[45]Neumann,
Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International Relations,
p. 130.
[46]Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International
Relations, p. 148.
[47]Neumann, Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International
Relations, pp. 148-149.
[48]Neumann,
Russia and the Idea of Europe: A Study in Identity and International Relations,
p. 151.
[49]Andranik
Migranyan, What is “Putinism”?, Russia in Global Affairs, Vol. 2, April-June,
200, pp. 30-33.
[50]Migranyan, What is “Putinism”?, p. 33.
[51]В.И. Черный, Национализм в России в конце XX – начале XXI веков, дипломная работа, Министерство образования и науки Российской
Федерации, Государственное образовательное учреждение высшего профессионального образования, http://5ka.su/ref/history/0_object8218.html, 2004, p. 4.
[52]Русский национальный собор (РНС)
(Russkii Nazional’ni Sobor - Russian National Assembly) was founded in
February 1992 by a group of Russian nationalist leaders (A. Sterligov, B. Rasputin,
G. Zyuganov, A. Makashov).
It constituted a new organization as an
“umbrella coalition” of numerous groups and fractions and
declared itself a “block of patriotic parties and Russian national movements
with a goal of unifying Russian and other indigenous peoples of Russia for the
sake of revival of united Motherland, for defence of national-state interests,
for preserving traditional moral and religious values of Russia’s citizens”.
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*Anıl Çiçek - Dr., Head of Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Republic of Turkey, completed his post-doctoral research studies at the University of Latvia as a part of the Jean Monnet Scholarship Program, achieved Russian language certificate TRKI-III (advanced level) of the University of St Petersburg
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