Katkov: Moscow Publicist at the Church Gates

Abstract

From the onset, the traditional image of the prominent Russian conservative of the second half of the 19th century, the famous founder of the Moscow Vedomosti newspaper M. N. Katkov as a “defender of traditional values” was questionable. Representatives of various ideological camps: Westernist liberals, Slavophiles and nationalists from the editorial board of the Novoye Vremya newspaper were united in viewing him as a smart opportunist, who had chosen a convenient time for supporting the government to forward his personal ambitions. Despite the fact that speeches in defense of the Church could indeed be heard in Katkov’s journalism and his publications, in many ways they occupied rather an instrumental place in the system of his ideological views, which was far from the fi rst and which was repeatedly noted at the time by both Slavophiles and church traditionalists per se, such as T. I. Filippov and K. N. Leontiev. In this respect, Katkov came to be rehabilitated by Soviet historiography, which in a simplifi ed form argued the unity of “the liberal” and “the conservative” periods of his activity. This simplistic and ideologized image of Katkov is still present in modern research. Post-Soviet, especially conservative-minded, authors often tend to present Katkov as a consistent monarchist guardian and a no less consistent Orthodox conservative. And yet, Katkov’s political ideology assumed the transformation of Russia into a centralized and homogeneous national state of the European type, in which there could be no place for status in statu. Maintaining the unconditional loyalty to the Orthodox Church, at the same time the Moscow publicist denied its political subjectivity. By his propaganda of “the Russian Catholicism” and “the Russian Judaism”, Katkov came to be the fi rst one in the Russian conservative tradition to separate the Russian national identity from religion as such and Orthodoxy in particular.