Liberalism in Pre-revolutionary Russia by Susanna Rabow-Edling

Author:Susanna Rabow-Edling [Rabow-Edling, Susanna]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General, Revolutionary, Russia & the Former Soviet Union, Modern, 19th Century, 20th Century
ISBN: 9781351370301
Google: GGFoDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2018-08-06T01:33:00+00:00

Cultural change and the role of nationality

Another important theme in Russian liberal thought during the second quarter of the nineteenth century was the search for a national identity. At the heart of the matter was the long Russian practice of imitating Western ideas, models and trends.58 Whereas in the eighteenth-century imitation of the West had been a way for the educated Russian elite to feel part of an enlightened European culture, in the new era of romanticism, they had to express Russia’s national spirit. In order to become a nation to be reckoned with, Russia had to produce original contributions in the fields of philosophy and the arts. The Romantic discourse with its emphasis on originality in combination with Chaadaev’s criticism of the imitated Russian culture created a sense of cultural backwardness among the educated elite. Both Slavophiles and Westernizers agreed that the formation of a distinctive Russian national culture was a key objective, even if they disagreed on the ways to produce such a culture and what it should be based on. The radical Westernizer and literary critic Vissarion Belinsky was the main public propagator of the Westernist standpoint on the issue of nationality.

Russian intellectuals were very much aware of the central role that nationality played in contemporary European thought. In his review of Russian literature of the 1830s, Belinsky noted that nationality was ‘the alpha and omega’ of the new period. ‘Our day is pre-eminently a day of vigorous development of nationalities’, he wrote. As a consequence, a nation without nationality was seen as a man without personality.59 A consequence of this, which was of vital concern to Russian intellectuals, was the fact that other nations only took an interest in you as a nationality. A Frenchman was only interested in a German to the extent that he or she was German, Belinsky argued. Thus, he continued, to be meaningful, i.e. to be genuine and original, Russian literature had to express Russia’s national spirit. Regardless of whether or not this spirit was manifest in the people, or in educated society, literature had to be the expression and symbol of its inner life, which was also the life of the nation. This did not exhaust the meaning of literature, but was one of its most essential attributes and conditions.60 A national literature should be:

‘the collective body of such artistic and literary productions as are the fruits of the free inspiration and concerted […] efforts of men […] fully expressing and reproducing […] the spirit of the people in whose midst they have been born and educated, whose life they live and spirit they breathe, expressing in their creative productions its intimate life to its innermost depths and pulsation. In the history of such a literature there are not, nor can there be, any leaps […] Such a literature cannot be at one and the same time both French and German, English and Italian’.61

To Belinsky, the originality of a nation consisted of a specific mentality and outlook. It was visible in its religion, language, and above all, the customs peculiar to that specific nation.

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