Eurasianists

[Sergey Glebov]

Dear Alexandra,

 

all Russian historians had to say something about the Mongols, of course,
but apart from the Eurasianists very few people had anything positive to say
about them. Charles Halperin's argument regarding Karamzin's influence on
Vernadsky is substantiated because Karamzin saw the Mongols as an external
force that spearheaded the unification of divided Rus' princedoms. You have
this wonderful sentence in Karamzin's History: "". And Moscow owned its
greatness to the Khans." He also mentioned the re-enforcement of oriental
ties 
of Russia acquired through Byzantium by the Mongol invasion in his Memoir 
but never specified what these ties were. 

But Halperin talks about the impact of the Mongols on the rise of the Moscow
STATE specifically. In all other respects, Karamzin believed that settled
and Christian Russians were infinitely superior to the "barabric" Mongols
and was reluctant to admit that these barbarians had any other impact on the
course of Russian history apart from utter destruction of civilization and
the subsequent need to unify the princedoms by Moscow. Karamzin saw the
Russian state as derived from Kiev, and the latter he described as similar
to other European states (feudal monarchies of Europe were founded by
Germanic barbarians, and so was Kievan Russia by Varangians).

This very positive mentioning of the Mongols in Karamzin needs to be read in
the context of his conception of the unique and positive protective role of
the Russian autocracy, which he developed under the impact of the French
Revolution and the subsequent Napoleonic wars. Otherwise, Karamzin's view of
the Mongols doesn't seem to differ from that of other Russian historians.
Solov'ev, of course, dismissed the Mongols as "irrelevant" because they had
nothing to add to his Hegelian scheme of the development of state, and I
already mentioned Kliuchevsky's view.  I am not qualified to say much about
the North as a lieu of Russian identity in literature but I don't think the
East (meaning Muslim or nomadic east of "Eurasia") was ever (before the
Eurasianists) a powerful symbol of that identity.

 

With friendly regards,

 

Sergey

 

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Dear Sergey,

 

Thank you very much for your informative response to my comments regards
Andrey's views related to Kundera, Russian identity, etc. I've meant to say
that the emphasis on the pivotal role of Mongols in the course of Russian
history appears to have some Eurasianist overtones or rather evocative of
some Eurasianist tenets...

Since you wrote your PhD thesis on Eurasianists,it would be interesting to
know whether you agree with Halperin's statement (expressed in his article
on Vernadsky, Slavic Review, 41, vol.3, autumn 1982) that "Vernadsky's
conception of the role of Mongols in the rise of Moscow derived from
Karamzin, although it had been rejected by Solov'ev and Kliuchevsky"
(p.479).

I think that in any discussion of Russian identity in terms of spatial
symbolism, one shouldn't overlook the fact that the North was often seen as
a symbol of national particularity. This notion was especially well
developed in literary texts penned by Russian Romantics. Otto Boele
discusses this issue very  convincingly in his book "The North in Russian
Romantic Literature" (Rodopi, Amsterdam, 1996). According to this book, in
Russian Romantic literature the North replaced the East as the symbol of
national identity. Russian Symbolists/modernists (Gippius, Merezhkovsky,
Prishvin, etc.) also were interested in this notion and travelled to the
North of Russia searching for various manifestation of pure Russian spirit
there...The  mythologeme related to Kitezh was well explored in many works
of the modernist period, too...

In sum, I think that it's important to bear in mind the Northern-Southern
cultural paradigm, too, when we talk about Russian identity in cultural and
literary contexts.

 

All very best,

Alexandra

 


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