Gavriil Buzhinskiy and “Commonwealth”: from the History of an Intellectual Innovation of the Petrine Era

Abstract

The term “citizenship” was used as an equivalent of the Latin “res publica” or “civitas” in Russian political culture in the second half of the 17th century. One of the remarkable intellectual innovations of the Petrine era was the regular use of the concept of “commonwealth” as an equivalent for the Latin “res publica”. An alumni from the Kiev-Mohyla Academy, Gavriil Buzhinskiy, a famous preacher and translator of the first quarter of the 18th century, played a major role in making this practice widespread. There is no reason to associate Gavriil Buzhinskiy’s “commonwealth”, as well as the political ideas of the preacher in general, exclusively with the Early modern political theory of Europe. In Buzhinskiy’s sermons, “commonwealth” was interpreted mainly from the standpoint of Orthodox political theology. Buzhinskiy’s ideas are closer to the Augustinian version of “res publica” than to natural law foundations, in particular, of S. Pufendorf. The appeal to the latter is more superficial and stems from Gavriil’s translation of his works, rather than from logical acceptance of his ideas. In his sermons, Gavriil Buzhinskiy successfully embed “commonwealth” into “monarchical rule”. The term “commonwealth” became one of the options for representing a political community, along with which other integrative concepts, such as “Russia” and “fatherland”, were used in the political discourse of the Petrine era. In comparison with them, “commonwealth” assumed rather an intellectual comprehension of reality and required erudition to grasp this type of political ideas. “Commonwealth” could become part of a whole ideological program, in which it was intrinsically linked with the concepts of “service”, “duty” and, especially, “common good”.