Imperial Europeism, or Mikhail Katkov’s truth versus Russian society

Abstract

The author seeks to destroy the myth surrounding the personality of Mikhail Katkov, one of Russia’s most prominent thinkers and journalists, who defended the Russian imperial ideology, believing it to have descended from European views to take root in the local culture. The author invokes two major figures of Russian history and culture: Peter the Great and the poet Aleksandr Pushkin. Katkov argued that Russia owed its successful integration into European history to Peter the Great, who transformed the country into a powerful empire and created an independent space for spiritual experiments. So it no longer seems accidental that Pushkin was referred to as ‘the singer of the empire and freedom’. It was for that reason that Katkov jumps to the defence of the Russian empire, fearlessly opposing the government, no less, who, he thought, had lost touch with reality. Eventually, Katkov was fighting two enemies: Russian nihilists (with Herzen in the lead), who wasted no time undermining the empire, and Russian liberals, who would stop at nothing, even welcome a foreign invasion, in order to bring down the empire (the so-called ‘Polish intrigue’). The author sets out to reconstruct the writer’s true image through his work.