Eurasianism: affirming the person in an “era of faith”

Abstract

Eurasianism emerged as an intellectual movement in 1921 with the publication of the almanac Iskhod k Vostoku. The concept of the person was the Eurasianists' principal instrument for translating their general religious expectations of Russia's era of faith of the early 1920s into a political program. It emerged between 1925 and 1927 in intensive discussions among the movement's leaders. The most insightful responses among the many reactions to Eurasianism's political ideology belonged to the historian and literary critic P.M. Bitsilli, the philosopher Nikolai Berdiaev, and Georgii Florovskii, all of whom in one way or another had been affiliated with the Eurasianist movement during the 1920s, sympathized with some of its ideas, yet sharply rejected its political implications. The Eurasianism of 1932 also contained clear statements about safeguarding individual rights against the state, against social collectives, and against religious intolerance.