Rossiia i messianizm. K 'russkoi idee' by Manuel' Sarkisiants (review)

Abstract

REVIEWS 569 published up to 2003 on Trubetskoiand questions relatingto him and Eurasianism . Moreover, Dr Poljakov has written an extremely interesting essay analysing Trubetskoi's Eurasian vision and he has collected a great deal of biographical material on Trubetskoi to reconstruct the influences on him. Trubetskoi'sown archive has been unlucky. Most of his archive dating from the pre-revolutionaryperiod, including Trubetskoi's unpublished work and library,had to be abandoned in Rostov-on-Don when the Civil War forced Trubetskoi to leave. At the very end of his life Trubetskoi'sflat in Vienna was subjected to searches by the Gestapo who took away much important material. This and the resultsof American bombing of Vienna at the end of the Second World War, when a bomb fell on the flat, explainswhy there is so little material from Trubetskoi's own archive and why the correspondence between him andJakobson plays such an importantrole in the analysisof his ideas. Poljakov argues that Trubetskoi's ideas and Weltanschauung were greatly influencedby the creativepower of his father'sgeneration. SergeiNikolaevich Trubetskoi(i862-1905) was a philosopherand Christianthinkerand friendof Vladimir Solov'ev's and his legacy can be clearlyseen in his son's work. The circumstancesof his life acted as a 'distortingmirror'(p. 414) and meant that his ideas tended to be expressedin more extreme forms.He was, however, the firstto try to express and re-evaluatea new semiotic world and did so in the emigration.Jakobson considered that by the end of his life Trubetskoi was consciousthat his prognosesof historicaldevelopmentswere flawed.However, his work created a bridge between linguisticand ethnographicstudies on the one hand and culturaland historicaldevelopmentson the other. His contribution to linguisticsis still worth studyingas is his place as one of the foremost thinkersof the Eurasianmovement. It seems unlikelythat the adherents of political Eurasianismin Russia are going to spend much time examining Trubetskoi's work and the emigre context within which it was produced. However, given that so much writing on Eurasianismtends to be a summaryof ideas ratherthan a criticalanalysis, it is much to be hoped that Poljakov'sessay will at least be translatedand published in English. His collection of material and his analysis will be of much interest to scholarsof this subject. ChristChurch CATHERINEANDREYEV Oxford Sarkisiants,Manuel'. Rossiiai messianizm. K 'russkoi idee'.Unipress, St Petersburg , 2005. 272 pp. Notes. Price unknown. RussiA AND MESSIANISM: ONJN. A. BERDLAEV'S 'RussiAN IDEA' representsan excellent translation from German and the second, thoroughly updated edition of Sarkisyanz's1955 monograph Russland undderMessianismus desOrients (Russia and the Messianismof the Orient) one of the most importantcontributions to the post-war scholarly study of Russian nationalism. The publication of both, a Russian version of this book and a new, extended edition, seems, in 570 SEER, 84, 3, JULY 2oo6 view of recent developments in Russian philosophical and social thinking, entirelyapt. I would thinkthat thisbook shouldhave an impact on contemporary Russian intellectualdebates in that it constitutesa sophisticatedinterpretation of some pathologies of modern Russiannationalismand illustrateshow well some researchersin the West understood, alreadyduring the Cold War, certain Russian culturaland political issuesthat are hotly debated in Moscow today. For instance, Sarkisyanz's1955 firstedition representeda kindof previewof what was to happen to Russian Communist ideology in the documents of Gennadii Ziuganov's Communist Party of the Russian Federation and, especially, in the numerous writingsof Ziuganov himself. Sarkisyanzdemonstratedalreadyfiftyyears ago that Russian Bolshevismowed at least as much to some peculiaritiesof the Russian national tradition as to West European Marxism. As early as in the mid-nineteenth century, one could observe some astounding similaritiesnot only in the structureand radicalismbut, interestingly , also in the contents of Russian nominally left- and clearly right-wing thinking. These substantive similaritiesinclude the belief in Russia's special role in world history, her natural affinity to such notions as autocracy and ideocracy as well as collectivismand socialism,her peculiar position between the Eastand West, her capacityto offerhumanityan alternativepath of development , her ability to provide a form of philosophical and social thinking fundamentallydifferentfrom that of the West, and others.While ideas such as these constitute commonplaces today and had been pronounced before Sarkisyanz'sfirst edition of 1955, they are still insufficientlyappreciated and interpretedin both Russia and the West. Thus, this second, extended Russian edition is only...