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| Schelling |
Russian Grand Culture: an integral part of European Romantism
Русская великая культура:
неотделнмя часть европейского романтизма
La grande cultura russa: parte integrante del romanticismo europeo
La grande culture russe: partie intégrante du romantisme européen
Die grosse russische Literatur. ein unteilbares Bestandteil der europaeischen Romantik.
The Nineteenth Century constitutes, probably, the Golden Age of Russian Culture. The transformations introduced by Peter 1st and Catherine 2nd with the help of European intellectuals had succeeded in transforming, at least superficially, Russia into a “modern nation”, a “nation policée”, with its centralized government, its glamorous court, its stable Army and administration.
The Napoleonic Wars had raised, also in the Russian People, the sense of belonging to a sole nation, beyond class boundaries; Romanticism had stimulated the innate sense of the Russian People for emotions, religion, fabulous, communitarism and music; the influence of German philosophers (especially Shelling and Hegel) was open and formal. The circle of the “Lovers of Knowing” was devoted precisely to the study of those authors.
The great authors and musicians of the Russian culture, such as Puškin, Gogol’, Cechov, Dostojevskij and Tol'stoj, as well as Chaikowskij, Rachmaninoff and Rimskij-Korsakoff belong in the Nineteenth Century. Their production constitutes an integral part of the contemporary production of European Pre-Romanticism, Romantism, Verism and Decadentism. Finally, the “classical” historical and social Russian painting set down the bases, from one side, of the iconography of all fine arts devoted to the presentation of Russian history (such as theatre, cinema and “Socialist Realism” in general), and, from another side, constituted a precedent also for the historical painting style of other Slavonic Peoples, such as the Czechs.
As concerns culture’s history, the Nineteenth Century in Russia is characterized by the debate amongst “Slavophiles” and “Westerners”, which implies a profound debate about the identities of Russia and Europe. A debate which has no parallel, for its intensity, in other European culture, and which has not lost its actuality even today.
Consistently with the autocratic and aristocratic power structure of Tsarist Russia, neither Slavophiles, nor Occidentalists, were bourgeois, nor democratic.
Occidentalists thought that Russia, because of its geographical separateness, and/or because of the Tatar domination, had been cut out of the European Civilization (which they understood, according to the enlightenment and idealistic patterns, as well as to De Maistre’s influence, as the sole “true” civilization), so that Russia had not participated to the “true” history.In this sense, the idea that the Occidentalists had of Russia was similar to the one that Marx would have expressed later on about the small peoples of Central-Eastern Europe, “Peoples without history”.
On the contrary, the Slavophiles, who rejected the idea of the Western history as the only “true” history, stressed the riches of Russia variegated history (Vikings, Byzantines, Tatars, Orthodoxy, Enlightenment), and emphasized the role of Russia to preserve ancient values such as spiritualism, mysticism, sociality, discipline, a.s.o., in a Europe which, because of rationalism and enlightenment, was losing its souls. Because of its capability to preserve ancient values, it was called to a mission, the one to save Europe.
Paradoxically, the views of the Slavophiles, if considered attentively, were not at all alien, nor, surely, opposed, to the dominant romantic views in XIX Century’s Central Europe. The refusal, by Slavophiles, to rally with the mainstream rationalism and economicism was common to all kinds of romanticism, from Goethe to Mazzini; the search of a primeval “pure” nationhood was shared with “patriots” of all kinds, from Heine to Gioberti,from Mickiewicz to Herczeg; the reconstruction of a primitive and communitarian society can be found in the American Thoreau and in the German von Hexthausen.
In general, the struggle opposing in Russia “Slavophiles” and “Westerners” is just a more acute and blatant aspect of the Europe-wide conflict between “Modernists” and “anti-Modernists”: Condorcet and Rousseau; Hegel and Kierkegaard; Marx and Nietzsche, a.s.o..
This idea, which is, at the end, the one of the Napoleonic Wars (the first “Patriotic War”), and of De Maistre, will survive through different generation, in Dostojevski, in national mobilitation for the “Great Patriotical War” against Nazism, and, at the end, is still the greater motivation of the assertion, by Russia, of a “special” role. In fact, what has always been stressed by Russian authorities is that present-days Europe would not have arisen without the victory of the Soviet Army against the Armies of the Third Reich.The joint celebration, on the Red Square, of the “Victory Day” (“Den’ Pobiedy”) 2010, together with European Authorities, including Angela Merkel, Donald Tusk and Tayyep Erdogan, constitutes the logical conclusion of this Russian ideology.
The Svavophile Chomjakov worked out the concept of “Sobornost”, from “Sobor” (assembly, church, cathedral) - which may be translated as “communitarism”, or consistorialism” or “conviviality” - a special human attitude, which, according to Chomjakov, was specifical to Orthodoxy. “Sobornost” should have constituted the opposite of the rationalism, the economism, the individualism of the West. A “born-again Russia” could have brought “Sobornost” to the dying West. In reality, “Sobornost” echoed the ideas of the bewonderers of primitive religion and of nature, like a certain number of Protestant Sects, and the American Trascendentalists.
Also Occidentalists started from the ideas of German Idealism. Their main difference was that Occidentalists, instead of magnifying the superiority of the Russian spirit, they preached that Russia, remaining far from the progressive spirit of Western Europe, would not be able to take profit of its potential.
The Nineteenth Century constitutes, probably, the Golden Age of Russian Culture. The transformations introduced by Peter 1st and Catherine 2nd with the help of European intellectuals had succeeded in transforming, at least superficially, Russia into a “modern nation”, a “nation policée”, with its centralized government, its glamorous court, its stable Army and administration.
The Napoleonic Wars had raised, also in the Russian People, the sense of belonging to a sole nation, beyond class boundaries; Romanticism had stimulated the innate sense of the Russian People for emotions, religion, fabulous, communitarism and music; the influence of German philosophers (especially Shelling and Hegel) was open and formal. The circle of the “Lovers of Knowing” was devoted precisely to the study of those authors.
The great authors and musicians of the Russian culture, such as Puškin, Gogol’, Cechov, Dostojevskij and Tolstoj, as well as Ciaikowskij, Rachmaninoff and Rimskij-Korsakoff belong in the Nineteenth Century. Their production constitutes an integral part of the contemporary production of European Pre-Romanticism, Romanticism, Verism and Decadentism. Finally, the “classical” historical and social Russian painting set down the bases, from one side, of the iconography of all fine arts devoted to the presentation of Russian history (such as theatre, cinema and “Socialist Realism” in general), and, from another side, constituted a precedent also for the historical painting style of other Slavonic Peoples, such as the Czechs.
As concerns culture’s history, the Nineteenth Century in Russia is characterized by the debate amongst “Slavophiles” and “Westerners”, which implies a profound debate about the identities of Russia and Europe. A debate which has no parallel, for its intensity, in other European culture, and which has not lost its actuality even today.
Consistently with the autocratic and aristocratic power structure of Tsarist Russia, neither Slavophiles, nor Occidentalists, were bourgeois, nor democratic.
Occidentalists thought that Russia, because of its geographical separateness, and/or because of the Tatar domination, had been cut out of the European Civilization (which they understood, according to the enlightenment and idealistic patterns, as well as to De Maistre’s influence, as the sole “true” civilization), so that Russia had not participated to the “true” history.In this sense, the idea that the Occidentalists had of Russia was similar to the one that Marx would have expressed later on about the small peoples of Central-Eastern Europe, “Peoples without history”.
On the contrary, the Slavophiles, who rejected the idea of the Western history as the only “true” history, stressed the riches of Russia variegated history (Vikings, Byzantines, Tatars, Orthodoxy, Enlightenment), and emphasized the role of Russia to preserve ancient values such as spiritualism, mysticism, sociality, discipline, a.s.o., in a Europe which, because of rationalism and enlightenment, was losing its souls. Because of its capability to preserve ancient values, it was called to a mission, the one to save Europe.
Paradoxically, the views of the Slavophiles, if considered attentively, were not at all alien, nor, surely, opposed, to the dominant romantic views in XIX Century’s Central Europe. The refusal, by Slavophiles, to rally with the mainstream rationalism and economicism was common to all kinds of romanticism, from Goethe to Mazzini; the search of a primeval “pure” nationhood was shared with “patriots” of all kinds, from Heine to Gioberti, to Herczeg; the reconstruction of a primitive and communitarian society can be found in the American Thoreau and in the German von Hexthausen.
In general, the struggle opposing in Russia “Slavophiles” and “Westerners” is just a more acute and blatant aspect of the Europe-wide conflict between “Modernists” and “anti-Modernists”: Condorcet and Rousseau; Hegel and Kierkegaard; Marx and Nietzsche, a.s.o..
This idea, which is, at the end, the one of the Napoleonic Wars (the first “Patriotic War”), and of De Maistre, will survive through different generation, in Dostojevski, in national mobilitation for the “Great Patriotical War” against Nazism, and, at the end, is still the greater motivation of the assertion, by Russia, of a “special” role. In fact, what has always been stressed by Russian authorities is that present-days Europe would not have arisen without the victory of the Soviet Army against the Armies of the Third Reich.The joint celebration, on the Red Square, of the “Victory Day” (“Den’ Pobiedy”) 2010, together with European Authorities, including Angela Merkel, Donald Tusk and Tayyep Erdogan, constitutes the logical conclusion of this Russian ideology.
The Svavophile Chomjakov worked out the concept of “Sobornost”, from “Sobor” (assembly, church, cathedral) - which may be translated as “communitarism”, or consistorialism” or “conviviality” - a special human attitude, which, according to Chomjakov, was specifical to Orthodoxy. “Sobornost” should have constituted the opposite of the rationalism, the economism, the individualism of the West. A “born-again Russia” could have brought “Sobornost” to the dying West. In reality, “Sobornost” echoed the ideas of the bewonderers of primitive religion and of nature, like a certain number of Protestant Sects, and the American Trascendentalists.
Also Occidentalists started from the ideas of German Idealism. Their main difference was that Occidentalists, instead of magnifying the superiority of the Russian spirit, they preached that Russia, remaining far from the progressive spirit of Western Europe, would not be able to take profit of its potential.
At the end of their evolution, many occidentalists, such as Herzen, Bakunin and Čaadayev, arrived at a positive concept of the traditional Russian communities exalted by “Slavophiles” (“mir” and “obščina”) as the only solid basis for the renewal of Russia.
Idealism was the source of the view that, of cultural history, had both Slavophiles and Occidentalists, but positivism and, in particular, comparative economics, became the basis for political debate.
The “Occidentalist” Čenyševsky accepted to confer a special role to the Russian land community (“obščina”), but considered it with a relativistic approach, seeing, in it, a social institution common to other countries, like Germany. According to him, the origins of obščina were not traditional, but fiscal, depending on tax obligations of the XVI Century.
Herzen, which had studied at length the revolutionary experiences in America, arrived at the conclusion that the American society was an intolerant one, as already Tocqueville had foreseen. It is worth considering to what extent this conclusion is similar to the one of many other disillusioned European revolutionaries, such as Heine and Carlyle.
Like the idea of “Sobornost”, also the concept of “Obščina” had not been discovered by Russians, but, on the contrary, by Germans. Von Haxthausen, a German aristocrat specialized in agriculture, had studied the Russian rural communities, had discussed of them with Herzen and was arrived at the end at a positive conclusion, since it found them consistent with his Christian and monarchic ideas.
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