1. On the subject of the origins of this culturological fashion and its current development, see the more detailed study by Scherrer, J. (2003) Kulturologie. Russland auf der Suche nach einer zivilisatorischen Identität, Göttingen, Wallstein Verlag.

2. In schools culturology is less ideologically committed than in the universities and is thought of mainly as a subject to do with general culture. It is taught at least once a week and personalized by teachers, who may interpret in their own way the idea of ‘culturology’. Themes are adapted to the audience’s age: for instance, in primary schools the material is often a story from folklore and ‘national traditions’.

3. Ministry of education standard for the specialization ‘020600 - culturology’, accessible on the internet.

4. This international collaboration has been set up in the context of the European Union programme for the reform of higher education in Russia. Researchers from the EHESS and Bochum cooperate in developing the Institute’s courses. Western lecturers teach short modules there and Russian students can gain credits for studying in the two partner institutions.

5. It comprises five taught modules: general human sciences, natural and exact sciences, specialized subjects (literature, art history, musicology, semiotics, science of religions, etc.), stand-alone classes (communication or study of sources), seminars in professional specialization.

6. Some gaps may be surprising: for example the nature-culture relationship, which is normal in French teaching of philosophy, is missing from nearly all culturological thinking. Though it often has an ecological gloss, in that it condemns the industrial world as polluting and driven by consumerism, the relationship between humans and the animal world, and as a corollary the question of the origin of language, are more often than not completely ignored.

7. Levâš, I. A. (2001), Kul’turologiâ. Ucčebnoe posobie dlâ studentov VUZov[Culturology. Textbook for students in higher education establishments], Minsk, Tetrasystem, p. 1.

8. I could mention at random Montesquieu, Rousseau, Freud, Jung, Nietzsche, Weber, Spengler, Toynbee, Cassirer, Jaspers, Lévi-Strauss, Barthes, Braudel, Foucault, Derrida, Ortega y Gasset, Aron, etc.

9. The label given to the period from the 1880s to the first decade of the 20th century, during which there flourished in Russia various modernist trends in religious philosophy, poetry, painting, etc. This period followed the one known as the ‘golden age’ of Russian literature with the appearance of the great novels (Gogol, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy…).

10. The most quoted authors are the pan-Slav conservatives N. Danilevski and K. Leontev, philosophers V. Soloviev, N. F. Fiodorov, N. Berdiaev and S. Bulgakov, but also scientists such as V. I. Vernadsky, and finally more contemporary figures such as Bakhtin and Lossev.

11. Drač, G. V. (ed.), Vvedenie v kul’turovedenie [Introduction to culturology], Rostov on the Don, Feniks, 1998, p. 132.

12. Gorelov, A. A. (2001), Kul’turologiâ. Učebnoe posobie [Culturology: A manual], Moscow, Urajt, p. 209.

13. So a number of textbooks contain chapters on the history of the West in which it is studied as a time-less whole, without major political discontinuities: the disappearance of the Roman empire, the rise of medieval states, the wars of religion, the revolutions of modern times, the transition to a republic or parliamentary system, are ignored. As regards the chapters devoted to Russia, there too the great breaks in Russian history, particularly those of the contemporary period (Alexander II’s reforms, the 1905 and 1917 revolutions, Stalinism, destalinization, etc.) are missing from all analyses because they are thought irrelevant to expression of the ‘essence’ of national identity.

14. Esin, A. B., Vvedenie v kul’turologiû, p. 6.

15. On this topic see Seriot, P. (1999), Structure et totalité. Les origines intellectuelles du structuralisme en Europe centrale et orientale, Paris, PUF.

16. Bagdasar’ân, N. G. (ed.) (1998), Kul’turologiâ v voprosah i v otvetah [Culturology: questions and answers], Moscow, Modek, p. 30.

17. Šišova, N. V. (ed.) (2001), Kul’turologiâ: èksamenacionnye otvety [Culturology: examination answers], Rostov on Don, Feniks, p. 14.

18. Website of the state university of Nijnii-Novgorod.

19. On this topic see Mongili, A. (1998), La Chute de l’URSS et la recherche scientifique, Paris, L’Harmattan.

20. Bagdasar’ân, N. G. (ed.), op. cit., p. 119.

21. Particularly in the work of L. N. Gumilev (1912-92), who did not hesitate to compare ethnology with statistics or meteorology and their assumed objectivity. He did not hide how much his interest in history was due to contemporary events and his wish to forestall ethnic conflicts, and he more or less explicitly invited the government to take a look at his theories, which were destined to become an ‘applied’ science at the state’s service. See Laruelle, M. (2000), ‘Lev N. Gumilev (1912-1992): biologisme et eurasisme en Russie’, Revue des études slaves, Paris, Institut d’Études Slaves, no. 1-2, pp. 163-90.

22. Drač, D. V. (ed.), op. cit., p. 15.

23. Gorelov, A. A., op. cit., p. 351.

24. Mongili, A., op. cit., p. 206.

25. The questionnaires are often perplexing, as only one answer may be given. For instance, for the question ‘what is the purpose of culturology?’ students have to choose between ‘a. understanding one’s own and other people’s culture, b. the unity and systematic nature of the approach to the study of culture, c. the empirical study of culture’. For the question ‘what are the characteristics of artistic thought?’ again there is a choice between ‘a. sensitivity, b. diversity, c. inspiration, d. intuition’.

26. St Petersburg State University website.

27. Timošinov, B. (2001), Kul’turologiâ. Kazakhstan, Evraziâ, Vostok, Zapad. Mirovaâ ètnosofiâ[Culturology. Kazakhstan, Eurasia, the East, the West. A world ethnosophy], Almaty.

28. Levâš, I. A., op.cit., p. 145.

29. Drač, G. V. (ed.), op. cit., p. 245.

30. Ibid., p. 274.

31. Gorelov, A. A., op. cit., p. 298.

32. Levâš, I. A., op. cit., p. 118.

33. Culturologists have trouble differentiating between the discipline itself and the object studied. Thus N. V. Šišova states that the aim of her textbook is to ‘study the different strands and schools of culturology’, by which she means the authors who are the object of her discourse, from Plato to Derrida, and not her current colleagues. See Šišova, N. V. (ed.), op. cit., p. 3.

34. Angenot, M. (1997), Les Idéologies du ressentiment, Montreal, XYZ.

35. Šišova, N. V. (ed.), op. cit., pp. 96-7.

36. Levâš, I. A., op. cit., p. 207.

37. Ibid., p. 3.

38. Drač, G. V. (ed.), op. cit., p. 18.

39. ‘Nature or God has created men and women different, adapted to carry out different functions… However, feminists do not understand this and say they are oppressed… Now, either openly or in private, many women are sorry that they have achieved emancipation and that they made it a principle of the social relationship between the sexes’ Esin, A. B., op. cit., p. 144.

40. ‘The bonds of Russian civilization’s historical tradition with Orthodoxy are so deep and close that we are right to speak of “Holy Russia” ‘, Drač, G. V. (ed.), op. cit., p. 136.

41. Bagdasar’ân, N. G. (ed.), op. cit., p. 152.

42. Levâš, I. A., op. cit., pp. 124-5.

43. Roždestvensky, U. V., op. cit., p. 205.