It is welcome news that Slavophilism can still intrigue “Western” scholars satiated with Cold War studies on Russian intellectual history – catering for all tastes, from the bellicose writing of Stephen Lukashevich on Ivan Aksakov,^[1] to the conceptually brilliant monograph of Andrzej Walicki,^[2] the “intellectual biography” by Abbot Gleason,^[3] and the German-style meticulousness of Peter Christoff’s “Introduction” (the latter seemingly exhausted the topic in the early 1990s by the impressive volume on Iurii Samarin).^[4] A comparably thorough study by Susanna Rabow-Edling appeared fifteen years later, well equipped with the latest fashionable methodology, and whose fruitfulness and appropriateness in this case is beyond doubt. Rabow-Edling endorses the “Cambridge school” of intellectual historians, spearheaded by Quentin Skinner, John Dunn, and John Greville Agard Pocock. This approach allows the author to move over past debates on the intellectual origins and philosophical achievements of Slavophiles, plunging directly into the historical context in order to understand what was being said and why.
Rabow-Edling sets out to discuss the intellectual background of Slavophile ideology, coining a vivid label “dual crisis of identity” as a title for the first chapter. Making short but persuasive references to Eric Hobsbawm and Liah Greenfeld, the author explains that Westernized and cultivated Russian intellectuals stood in stunning contrast to the economic, social and political foundations of the backward Empire. The confession of Fonvizin’s Ivanushka mirrors his blurring identity: “My body was born in Russia, that is true, but my spirit belonged to the French Crown.” The other side of the coin are the pervasive influences of Romanticism, refracted visions, and the self-perception of the “educated classes”: purely imitative Europeanness was no longer understood as “cultivated civilization,” but to the contrary, it came to be seen as barbarism – the Russians, having copied the West, stopped being human and turned into monkeys. That was the way the educated Russian aristocracy became trapped in the “dual crisis of identity.” In this context, as Rabow-Edling convincingly shows, Slavophilism might be interpreted as a way out of the predicament of how to combine being Russian and civilized.
The author interprets this Slavophile urge for overcoming Russian intellectuals’ identity crisis, drawing on the methodology of nationalism studies. For this purpose Rabow-Edling spends all of chapter three on the conceptions of the nation by discussing two types of nationalism: a political nationalism, striving for political reformation and seizure of power by means of popular movement; and a cultural nationalism that is based on the “moral regeneration of the national community” (P. 70). The author follows John Hutchinson, whom she abundantly cites in order to furnish evidence that cultural nationalism can also serve as a mighty weapon for social change, and even “in many contexts… this ‘grass roots’ movement has played a central part in nation-building.”^[5] Frederick Beiser’s writings on German Romanticism were also an inspiration for this monograph, as Rabow-Edling sets out to prove the profound political significance of this movement. In chapters four and five, Rabow-Edling interprets the Slavophile vision of “Russian Enlightenment” from the viewpoint of cultural nationalism, arriving at an understanding that Slavophiles strove to develop national culture with universal significance. This assumption is polemically sharpened in order to prove compatible with nationalism (at least of a cultural sort) and universalism, “of Romanticism and Enlightenment, of Russia and Europe, and of conservatism and progressivism” (P. 98). Her persuasive conception of Russian Romanticism is that it did not imply a “regressive” response to Modernity, but was more likely an alternative version of Modernity, partially transforming and partially retaining the key Enlightenment values.
Thus, Slavophiles struggled not against the West or Modernity as such, but against the imitative character of Russian Enlightenment, pleading for some original, Russian “genuine contribution to universal progress” of humankind (P. 45). The author counters Greenfeld’s simplistic (if perhaps even Russophobe) assumption that Russian nationalism, awakened by the crisis of identity in the late eighteenth century, had been unfolding around the smouldering sensation of “ressentiment” and “pure existential envy,” which educated Russians nourished against their European teachers and masters.^[6]
Here Rabow-Edling embarks on an useful mission to show that this form of Russian cultural and Romantic nationalism was not isolationist and anti-Western. This is a fruitful assumption, allowing her to conclude that “ideas that today seem incompatible once coexisted harmoniously” (P. 115). Besides, this discourse serves well in the “de-Orientalization” of Slavic studies and extirpating the “Cold War” approach to double standards, when Russian “xenophobic” and “aggressive” nationalism is opposed to the West’s “liberal” and “constructive” nationalism.
Induced by a certainly benevolent desire to vindicate Slavophilism from the accusation of “reaction” and “unpracticality,” Rabow-Edling consistently juxtaposes her “cultural nationalism” approach to Walicki’s conception of the “conservative utopia” in chapter six, “Cultural Nationalism as a Project for Social Change.” But this criticism misfires, because in Walicki’s sense of the word, derived from Karl Mannheim’s writings, “being utopian” is more commendable than reproachful – utopias “reveal a powerful tension between the ideal and the actual,” thereupon accumulating energy of the social transformation. The cornerstone feature of utopias is, then, their ability to challenge the existing order. According to Walicki, in the Slavophile case this energy was “introverted,” and in the long run did not bring about any considerable social change.^[7] Rabow-Edling addresses this in particular in her closing arguments, arriving at the contrary conclusion that the “Slavophile project” from the viewpoint of its own goals was a success, since it had no ambition of stirring a large scale mass movement, but instead sought the cultural regeneration of the nation (P. 140). Little wonder that Slavophilism as the only more or less original Russian ideology exerted enormous and ever present influence on the intelligentsia.
Doubts also arouse about the very allegiance of the term “nationalism” as applied to Slavophilism. Given that the author undertook a close analysis of the real historical meaning of certain utterances, it seems unconvincing to literally interpret the Slavophiles phrases about “nationality,” and “national culture.” It remains unclear why we should sustain claims for Russian originality, grass roots propensity, negligence of formal regulation, or insist on a distinct split between the state and the people as charged with some national meaning. It is not by chance that the richest and most interesting chapter, the seventh (and unfortunately the last), entitled “The Slavophile Project for Social Change,” deals surprisingly little with nationalism. The Slavophile prejudices against the state and modern tsarism, according to Rabow-Edling, came from a Romantic conviction that was based on the predominant role of the Church and people’s traditions. Moreover, their “radical project” of social change did not imply building a nation, but rather the restoration of traditional Russian principles.
At times, when reading Slavophile Thought and the Politics of Cultural Nationalism, one gets the impression that the author herself is not very much convinced of the nationalistic substance of Slavophilism, otherwise how should her declaration that “Russian nationalism never focus on nationality principle” (P. 17) be understood. Or when attacking the phrase that for Slavophiles nationality implied Christianity and uneducated people (P. 94), one must ask what Slavophilism has in common with nationalism? Instead, everything becomes clear when mentally substituting “nationalism” with “conservatism.” Then the establishment of the “Russian Enlightenment” as the key project of Slavophiles might be interpreted as an ideological reflection on the necessity of tradition, be it traditional or customary law, a tradition of people’s alienation from political decision making, a traditional economy in contrast to the nascent bourgeoisie, a tradition of “close communication” with the simple people, or traditional thinking as opposed to rationalism. There is no need for scholars to (re)invent nationalism, when it might be perfectly carried out by politicians.
Nationalism apparently jumps out of scholarship like a deus ex machina each time when faced with some old unsettled question. Here vast discussions of Soviet historians on whether Slavophilism was liberal or conservative are veiled by the notion of nationalism. Unable to be rid of this “cursed question,” Rabow-Edling employs the analytical framework of a “progressive – regressive” vintage of ideology, naturally investing Slavophiles with the first meaning. Yet it is a troublesome business to decide what is progressive and what is regressive, especially when applied to the “unpredictable” Russian history.
It is worth mentioning that unlike Western academia, Russian researchers have had a lavish feast of Slavophilism in the last two decades, having produced a dozen full-fledged monographs and countless kandidat dissertations. The author, nevertheless, stands evidently apart from these discourses; she refers to fairly dated works by Soviet historians E. A. Dudzinskaia, N. I. Tsimbaev and Iu. Z. Iankovskii, neglecting recent writings by T. F. Pirozhkova, S. N. Pushkin, K. M. Antonov and many others. Of course this reflects the author’s lack of knowledge and Russian scholars’ provincialism, theoretical weakness, and weathercock-like intentions: what was anathematized under the communist government, now is excessively praised, as it happened with pre-revolutionary conservatives and to some extent Slavophiles.
In the final analysis the heading of Susanna Rabow-Edling’s work might be better reformulated “The Politics of Cultural Nationalism by the Example of Slavophile Thought.” Then it would reflect the true interest of the author, which lays not so much in the nuances of Slavophiles’ ideas as in explicating the questionable heuristic potential of the notion of “cultural nationalism.” But as a whole this book serves well for the diversity of interpretations, providing some elegant insights into the essence of Slavophilism, and teaching a good lesson on an impartial, yet friendly attitude to the Russian intellectual tradition.