Antologies are only rarely well received. They are often criticized for simplistic approach, wrong kind of selectivity or lack of organization and scholarly apparatus. The collection of articles and essays put together by a well known specialist on the period of 1909-1917 Modest Kolerov deserves attention and praise as an example of superb work. Kolerov’s editorial work is also known for the annual publication Issledovania po istorii russkoi mysli.
Although many of the texts presented in the collection have been available to scholars and public for a long time, their combination in one volume allow us to follow a line in the debate on nationalism during one of the crucial periods of Russian history. Even more interestingly, this particular collection of articles brings some light upon the controversy of intelligentsia’s assimilationism and the moral stance behind intelligentsia’s nationalizing projects.
It was during this period that the Russian intelligentsia came to realize the acute necessity to come to terms with issues of national identity and their relation to the fact of the multinational character of the empire. Political language of nationalism became a highly contested ground as liberals entered the debate. At the same time, Struvian interpretations of “free” nationalism that “alone was capable of creating ‘imperium’” put additional pressure on the participants in the debate to elaborate more on their visions of the future of nationalities, ethnic or civic nature of Russian nationalism, and the relationship between differently understood nationalist projects and the tsarist regime. Our understanding of the fact that national(ist) mobilization during the period accounted for a significant part of instability in the empire does not discount the research into the social underpinnings of these processes; rather, we are more and more tempted to look at the combination between social issues and national grievances to better understand the dynamics of the collapse of the Old Regime in Russia. Sharp debates fought out in the press reflect this dynamics and we are lucky to have a professionally composed exposition.
The collection draws on two important debates, both related to Petr Struve: the first, in 1909, followed Struve’ article about Russian national identity (o natsional’nom litse) and drew much of its inspiration from the so-called “Jewish question”; the second, in 1916-1917, focused on the “moral and ethical elements” of the Russian national project. The editor precedes the texts with a thoughtful, although unfortunately too brief, introduction that outlines main positions in the debates and contextualizes them in terms of the imperial authority’s policies with respect to nationalities. Hopefully, the editor will expand the introduction: unfortunately, there is not too much of secondary historical literature on the subject except for the Vekhi controversy.
The first part of the collection reflects the controversy that surrounded the appearance of Petr Struve’s article in which the author, who in the course of his life slowly moved rightwards, problematized the relationship between “Russian” as “rossiiskii” and “russkii”. Struve, undoubtedly one of the first and most prominent Russian liberal nationalists, in a highly controversial and disputed article pronounced the emergence of “something that came forever: the national individuality (natsional’noe litso). For Struve, the national individuality of the Russians emerged in the opposition to the supranational, imperial identity of Russia as “Rossia”. Struve disagreed with the part of intelligentsia that accepted the imperial design of the concept “rossiiskii” and argued in favor of the “Russian national feeling”.
Struve’s position triggered a range of responses. Vinaver and Miliukov, Zhabotinsky and Golubev presented their own arguments. Considering the fact that the focus of the polemics was the so-called “Jewish question”, the publication can also be of value for those studying Jewish history in Russia. As Modest Kolerov argued in his inroduction, Jews, Germans and Ukrainians were indispensable for the Russian national project as they were major empire builders in Russia. Their position came under governmental attack at the end of the 19th century. This assault served, as it were, a precondition and messenger of the growing instability of the imperial ethnic and confessional structure. The first part of the collection reflects exactly this growing tension and helps us see the dilemmas faced by nationalities (assimilation) as well as the emerging exclusionist rhetoric of the liberal nationalists (Struve). Besides the abovementioned,
N. Minskii, D. Levin, V. Posse,
I. Zhilkin, M. Slavinskii, A. Poroshin, A. Maksimov, V. Khizhniakov, M. Mogilianskii, A. Pogodin and P. Boborykin participated in the collection of articles originally put together by F. Muskatblit as a reaction to Struve’s article.
The second part of the collection draws attention to another type of tension and focuses on the philosophical implications of nationalism. In particular, moral and ethical foundations of a nationalist project were at the center of the discussion between Petr Struve, Dmitrii Muretov, Evgenii Trubetskoi, Nicholas Berdiaev and Nicholas Ustrialov. The discussion is reprinted, for the most part, in the current version from the journal “Russkaia Mysl’”, according to the editor. Intelligentsia, largely defined by its critical stance with respect to the government, by its moral principles, also met the challenge of coming to terms with nationalist upsurge in the empire. Philosophical implications of nationalism became even more important during the time when, with the emergence of professional politics exemplified by parties and the State Duma, mny intellectuals withdrew into the realm of “pure” cultural production, Wildean art for the art’s sake.
For a reader of today the debate of 1909 – 1917 can serve not only as a remarkable historical reading. The debate provides us with an example of the language with which the phenomena of nationalism and imperial, supranational identity were approached at the beginning of the 20th century. It is also a good job of the editor and the publisher that we have this debate as a whole and we can evaluate the depth and the intensity of polemics. One of the goals of Ab Imperio as a journal is to draw attention to that polemics in pre-Revolutionary Russia and in emigration and to try to evaluate the applicability of the language of that debate, scholarly and polemical, to the current academic discussions on nationalism. It often seems that the terminology and concepts used prior to 1917 or in emigration were well developed; numerous examples of these can be found in the works of scholars and publicists as different as, for example, Struve and Presniakov were. At the same time, historical distance can point to possible pitfalls in developing one or another line of argument. For example, isn’t the three decades long transformation of Petr Struve from a Marxist to conservative monarchist via liberal nationalist in part defined by the way his argument developed?
It remains to be seen whether this publication will be followed by a detailed research into the debate it contains. Hopefully, the publication, timely and well done, will attract researchers and give us new insights into the intellectual history of the dilemmas of Russian nationalisms at the beginning of the 20th century.