Roman Jakobson: deux programmes de fondation de la slavistique, 1929/1953

Abstract

Natalja AVTONOMOVA, Institute of Philosophy, Moscow : «R. Jakobson : two founding programs of slavistics, 1929 - 1953»
 This paper shows the specificity of Jakobson's ideas about the Slavic world, in their relations to classical slavophilism (which considered that the Western Slavs, for religious reasons, did not really belong to the Slavic world) and to eurasianism (as represented by N. Trubetzkoy, who denied to the Slavic world any existence other than the purely linguistic).
 In Prague Jakobson is deeply involved in comparing Russian scientific ideas and corresponding Czech ideas. He strives to include into the scope of Eurasianism Western Slavic problematics, which had been expelled from studying by the Slavophils and Trubetzkoy.
 The «American» Jakobson, on the other hand, deals with the problem of Slavdom from another geographical and epistemological point of view. The Slavic cultural community is presented through the literature of the Western, Southern and Eastern Slavs, and Jakobson studies how the community of language determines a certain degree of cultural community.
 The «Eurasian» line of Jakobson's work is a missing link between the slavophile approach of the Slavic world and the conception he had after 1939, as a political, linguistic and cultural unit.