Article contents
Nationalism and the State: A Russian Dilemma
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 03 June 2009
Extract
The title of the panel at which this paper was originally presented — “Nationalism and the Growth of States”, at the 1960 meeting of the American Historical Association in New York City — suggested a concern with nationalism as a political phenomenon. We were not speaking primarily about love of country, the cultivation of a national style or hatred of the foreigner, but about political convictions, attitudes or movements and their relation to the state. The dilemma of nineteenth-century Russian nationalism, so defined, consists in this — that it could only with difficulty, if at all, view the tsarist state as the embodiment of the national purpose, as the necessary instrument and expression of national goals and values, while the state, for its part, looked upon every autonomous expression of nationalism with fear and suspicion.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1962
References
1 See the famous collection of essays edited by Gershenzon, M. O. in Moscow in 1909, VekhiGoogle Scholar (“Signposts”) and written by him, Berdiaev, Nicholas, Sergei Bulgakov, Peter Struve and others; also, Bulgakov's Dva Grada (Moscow, 1911), Vol. ll, 291–292, where he states that “each manifestation of Russian national consciousness is met with distrust and hostility, and this boycott, or self-boycott, of Russian self-awareness reflects its spiritual weakness”.Google Scholar
2 Struve, P. B., “Bliudenie sebia”, Russkaia Mysi', 1916, no. 1, 140–142.Google Scholar
3 Cherniaysky, Michael, “‘Holy Russia” A Study in the History of an Idea”, American Historical Review, LXIII (04, 1958), 617–637.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Rogger, Hans, National Consciousness in Eighteenth-Century Russia (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 253–262.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
5 Aksakov, Konstantin, Polnoe sobranie sochinenii, I (Moscow, 1889), 241:Google Scholar “The foremost minds of the West are beginning to realize that the lie lies not in one or an other form of state, but in the state itself as an idea, as a principle; that one ought not to speak of which form is worse and which better, which true and which false, but about the fact that the state, qua state, is a lie.” Cf. Riasanovsky, N. V., Russia and the West in the Teaching of the Slavophiles (Cambridge, Mass., 1952), 121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
6 The text of Aksakov's memorandum is given in Brodskii, L.Rannie slavianofily (Moscow, 1910), 69–102.Google ScholarTucker, R. C., in his article “Dual Russia” in Black, C. E., ed., The Transformation of Russian Society (Cambridge, Mass., 1960), 587–605,Google Scholar describes Aksakov's program as one designed to make possible a peaceful coexistence between an absolutist government and an apolitical people. Even this more limited statement of Aksakov's aims implies the removal of the state to the periphery of national life. See also Riasanovsky, , Russia and the West, 152.Google Scholar
7 Sarkisyanz, Emanuel, Russland und der Messianismus des Orients (Tübingen, 1955), 156, note 11, and Tucker, loc. cit., 593.Google Scholar
8 Miliukov, P. N., “Slavianofily”, Entsiklopedicheskii slovar' Brokgaus, XXX, 311,Google Scholar and Riasanovsky, V. N., Nicholas 1 and Official Nationality (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1959), 226.Google Scholar
9 In the periodical Vest'. See Masaryk, Thomas G., The Spirit of Russia (London, 1919), I, 328.Google Scholar
10 Riasanovsky, , Nicholas 1, 142–144, 150, 167, 219.Google Scholar
11 Letter to Aksakova, A. F., in Pigarev, K., “F. I. Tiutchev i problemy vneshnei politiki tsarskoi Rossii”, Literaturnoe Nasledstvo, no. 19/21 (1935), 246. The letter is dated 1 12. 1870.Google Scholar
12 Letter to Chaadaev, P. (1853) in Hans Kohn, The Mind of Modern Russia (New Brunswick, N.J., 1955), 92.Google Scholar
13 Florovsky, George, “The Historical Premonitions of Tyutchev”, The Slavonic Review, III (1924–1925), 338.Google Scholar
14 Aksakov, I. S., Biografiia F. I. Tiutcheva (Moscow, 1886), 163, quotes a letter from Tiutchev to a Russian friend in France, dated 15 07 1872, in which Tiutchev speaks of the general decline of the dynastic sentiment without which, he felt, there could be no monarchy. Speaking of the possibility of a republican era in Russia he adds: “Il n'y a que la Russie, où le principe dynastique a de l'avenir, mais c'est à la condition sine qua non que la dynastic se fasse de plus en plus nationale, car en dehors de la nationalité, d'une énergique et consciente nationalité, l'autocratie russe est un nonsens.”Google Scholar
15 Kohn, , The Mind of Modern Russia, 92, 94, and Peter Scheibert, Von Bakunin zu Lenin (Leiden, 1956), I, 290.Google Scholar
16 Pares, Bernard, Russia (Washington-New York, n.d.), 72.Google Scholar Hans Speier, in a review paper presented at the 1958 Arden House Conference (see Black, , Transformation of Russian Society, 655), described the anti-Westernism of Dostoevskii and Danilevskii as an expression of individual views rather than of public opinion, while Prof. Barghoorn, in the same volume (p. 576) states that the extreme nationalism of Danilevskii, Dostoevskii and Strakhov was not representative either of official policy or of Russian public opinion.Google Scholar
17 Danilevskii, N. Ia., Rossiia i Evropa, 5th ed. (St. Petersburg, 1895), 538–539.Google Scholar
18 Ibid., 191, 202, 526.
19 Ibid., 525 and Michael Petrovich, B., The Emergence of Russian Panslavism, 1856–1870 (New York, 1956), 92.Google Scholar
20 Unpublished fragment from “The Possessed” in Brodski, N., et al, Der Unbekannte Dostojewski (München, 1931), 240.Google Scholar See also R. Lauth, “Die Bedeutung der SchatowIdeologie für die philosophische Weltanschauung Dostojewskis”, Münchener Beiträge zur Slavenkunde. Festgabe far Paul Diels (= Veröffentlichungen des Osteuropa Institutes Müanchen, Band IV) (1953), 240–252.Google Scholar
21 Karpovich, Michael, “Russian Imperialism or Communist Aggression”, The New Leader, 06 4 and 11, 1951,Google Scholar and Kohn, Hans, Pan-Slavism; Its History and Ideology (University of Notre-Dame Press, 1953), 141, 170.Google Scholar
22 O. K. (Novikova, Olga), Russia and England (London, 1880), 24–35,Google Scholar 53–60, 98–106, reproduces extensive excerpts of three of Ivan Aksakov's speeches delivered in Moscow during this period. Byrnes, R. F., “Pobedonostsev on the Instruments of Russian Government”, in Simmons, E. J., ed., Continuity and Change in Russian and Soviet Thought (Cambridge, Mass., 1955), 119, characterized a famous conservative's view of popular sympathy for the Slavic cause in the following words: “… he soon realized that the government would have to control all such popular movements or face the danger that they might turn against the state in distrust and then in enmity.”Google Scholar
23 Killington, J. H., Mikhailovskii and Russian Populism (Oxford, 1958), 99–101,Google Scholar and Venturi, Franco, Roots of Revolution (London, 1960), 559–562.Google Scholar
24 Billington, , Mikhailovskii, 100.Google Scholar
25 Kohn, , Pan-Slavism, 169.Google Scholar
26 Gradovskii, A. D., Sobranie Sochinenii, VI (St. Petersburg, 1901), 359–362.Google Scholar
27 Ibid., 360.
28 Sarkisyanz, , Russland, 157.Google Scholar
29 Pobedonostsev, Konstantin, L'autocratie russe (Paris, 1927), 627. A measure of the difficulty faced by a Russian statesman who wished to be both a nationalist and a defender of the undiminished authority of the state is Pobedonostsev's assertion that the state was an expression of the national will and of the national faith and his belief that there could be no institution or individual whose power did not derive from that of the state, which was absolute. There was, in reality, no opportunity for the national will or national tradition to define or assert themselves unless one assumed that these were always identical with the will of the state. Even Pobedonostsev could not claim that such an identity always existed, and he was highly critical of Nicholas I for the alienation of his court from the people and of Alexander II for the introduction of non-Russian principles into Russian life.Google Scholar
30 Struve, Peter, “My Contacts and Conflicts with Lenin”, Slavonic Review, XII (04, 1934), 575. Compare also Riasanovsky's Russia and the West, 199, concerning A. Kireev's restatement of Slavophilism.Google Scholar
31 Kornlov, A. A., Modern Russian History (New York, 1943), II, 340.Google Scholar The domestic political implications of a statement by the poet Leonid Andreev were unmistakable: “If the German be our enemy, then this war is necessary; if the English and the French be our friends and allies, then this war is good and its purpose is good.” (ibid., 346.)
32 Shul'gin, V. V., Dni (Belgrade, 1925).Google Scholar
33 Muretov, D., “Etiudy o natsionalizme”, Russkaia Mysl', 1916, no. 1, 64–72.Google Scholar
34 Trubetskoi, E. N. in Russkaia Mysl', 1916, no. 4, 79–87.Google Scholar
35 Soloviev, V. S., Sobranie Sochinenii, V (St. Petersburg, 1883–1897), i.Google Scholar
36 Quoted by Zenkovskii, V. V., Russkie mysliteli i Evropa, 2nd ed. (Paris, 1955), 112–113.Google Scholar
- 9
- Cited by